Comey was in an impossible position.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/comey-trum ... -1.4033178A difference in Comey's mind was likely that Clinton's emails were now a matter of public record, said Gary Schmitt, co-director of the Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
"It would have been very strange for the bureau to deny an investigation was going on from the Clinton emails when there was all the slop on the table."
The investigation into Trump and his team's possible links to the Russian state, on the other hand, would likely have involved intelligence sourcing of confidential information, "which you would want to keep secret until sufficient facts have been gathered to either indict or not."
Like Swecker, John McLaughlin, a former deputy director of the CIA, rejects the premise that the current director would be compromised politically. He lays some blame on the part of former attorney general Loretta Lynch, who he believes should have tapped her deputy to take over the Clinton emails probe instead of passing it down to the FBI.
"It's easy to criticize him for what happened, but the truth is, he should never have been asked to take responsibility for the investigation," McLaughlin said.
On the other hand, if Lynch had handed it over to her deputy, the screaming would have been quite loud since the Republican stance is that the DoJ is politicized. You know, as opposed to Benghazi (which would never have been within the FBI's mandate, I know, but just sezzin).
I agree with the CBC article; there are two key takeaways:
Monday's hearing yielded other big takeaways. Comey and Admiral Mike Rogers, director of the National Security Agency, confirmed publicly for the first time that the FBI was investigating the Trump campaign's alleged ties with Russia, and whether there was any unlawful collusion. They also told the bipartisan committee there was no evidence to support Trump's unsubstantiated claims that the previous administration had wiretapped Trump Tower in Manhattan.
The investigation of the extent and purpose behind Russia's interaction with folks on team Trump will take time, and not much is likely to come-out publicly until conclusions can be drawn.
Meanwhile, Trump (via Spicer) isn't giving-up on the wiretap claim.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politi ... story.htmlNow that members of Congress, British intelligence officials, and the FBI director have all publicly denied that former President Obama tapped President Trump’s phones during the election season, will Trump withdraw the claim?
“No,” White House Press Secretary told inquiring reporters on Monday.
At the same time, Flynn and Manfort have been retroactively demoted.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... spicer-fbiDuring the briefing, Spicer sought to distance the Trump campaign from aides who have come under scrutiny for their contacts with Russia after they were the subject of a line of questioning during the House committee hearing. He dismissed Carter Page, an informal foreign policy adviser to Trump, and Roger Stone, a longtime Trump confidant, as “hangers on”.
“To look at some individual that was there for a short period of time or separately individuals who really didn’t play any role in the campaign and to suggest that those are the basis for anything is a bit ridiculous,” he added.
But Spicer’s claim that Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manger, had only played a “limited role for a very limited amount of time” drew immediate skepticism from the press corp. Manafort joined the Trump campaign in March 2016 before being promoted to campaign manager, and resigned amid scrutiny of his business dealings to pro-Russian leaders in Ukraine.
Spicer also called former national security adviser Michael Flynn a “volunteer of the campaign”. Flynn was an adviser to the Trump campaign and spoke on the first night of the 2016 Republican national convention before being appointed national security adviser once Trump won the election. He was forced to resign last month after misrepresenting his contacts with the Russian ambassador to Washington.
At this point, I'm figuring the Trump campaign and transition were probably not colluding with Russia,
per se. People like Flynn and Manafort did have unusual interaction with agents (direct or otherwise) of Russia and/or Russian-centric interests, and they were part of the campaign, transition, and early administration. However, that now seems to be more a reflection of an astoundingly naive team desperately grasping to fill positions with minimal vetting in a scenario where they were frozen-out of standard GOP networks and the positions were viewed as toxic to the established who's-who.
In other words, some boneheads did some boneheaded things, and team Trump chose to do anything but call it what it is - and thereby cauterize the wound - and they are now trapped in an endless cycle of revelation/denial, and are dragging much of the GOP with them.
Whether Trump and team's bullshitting is willful or ignorant, the results of Russia's fiddling is likely giving Putin quite a chuckle. There is no scenario in which Putin doesn't score points here; he can sit-back and watch team Trump, along with the rest of the government, score own-goals all day long.
A quantum state of signature may or may not be here... you just ruined it.