How the G-Man Worked To Bring Down POTUS

After former FBI director James Comey's testimony on Thursday, there were questions about why he waited so long to go public with all he knew.  He'd had two one-on-one meetings with Trump, along with several Trump-initiated phone calls, all deemed inappropriate, at the very least, by anyone who knows anything about how our system is supposed to work.

Comey first met with Trump at Trump Tower on January 6, when the then-FBI director had to tell President-elect Trump about some Russian-generated salacious material against him.  There were others in the room, but Comey said he was  unnerved by the tenor of Trump's comments and began recording the details on his laptop the minute he got back into his car.  He shared those notes almost immediately with other FBI members, so there would be no question about fuzzy recollections or later alterations.

The first private meeting took place on January 27, at a dinner set up by the White House. Comey testified he had no idea he would be the only guest until he walked in the door and say a small oval table set for two.  The conversation took an awkward turn toward his loyalty to the president.  Comey says Trump said, "I need loyalty. I expect loyalty."  Awkward pause, wherein Comey blew it by not saying, "My loyalty is to the country, to the constitution, blah, blah, blah".  Instead, he said something about honesty, and then muttered--to his own chagrin--something about "honest loyalty". Which Trump, of course, took to mean he'd just finagled a loyalty oath from the director of the FBI.

Game on!

On February 14, after an Oval Office meeting, Trump asked everyone but Comey to leave the room so they could talk about Mike Flynn, who had resigned as National Security Officer the day before.  According to Comey, Trump said Flynn was a "good guy" and he hoped Comey would see fit to "let this go". Comey says he only agreed that Flynn was a good guy and made no promises. Comey again took notes and discussed it with other FBI officials. He didn't go to the DOJ, he said, but asked DOJ head, Jeff Sessions, to keep him away from any more one-on-ones with Trump.

Then there were the phone calls, all generated by the president. The whole thing must have seemed satisfying and so buddy-buddy to Trump. Comey, as uncomfortable as he might have felt, took the meetings and took the calls and never told Trump this was wrong.

I submit it wasn't simply because Comey didn't want to hurt Trump's feelings.  Comey is the consummate FBI man and his sniffer is in fine working order. He was on the case and Trump was his mark. With each encounter came more revelations, more ammunition to use to build a case.  He took copious notes, clearly written to share when it came time for a showdown. (He knew contemporaneous notes had been accepted and used effectively in courts in other FBI matters. )

How long this might have gone on if Comey hadn't been fired is anybody's guess, but the firing opened the floodgates for Comey.  If he had insisted at the very start that private conversations with the president were off-limits, his case against Trump would be non-existent.  It may come down to "he said, he said", but given Trump's penchant for lying to save his skin, it'll be more like "he said, he lied".

But the capper came yesterday, when Trump was asked at a press conference if he would be willing to testify under oath that Comey lied about his version of their conversations. Trump said, and I quote, "A hundred percent". 

I call that a clear victory for the G-man.


(Cross-posted at Dagblog and Crooks and Liars)

Oh, That Trump! What a Guy! Huh?

So once again I have to apologize for being away after I said I wasn't going away. I went away.  But I wasn't gone. I settled in at Facebook and Twitter, talking short, saving my energies for some real stuff.

So now I'm tussling with what some laughingly call "chemo brain", but even I can see that Donald J. Trump has brought himself around to some heavy shit.  It's as if the whole world is watching, horrified, and all Trump is willing to acknowledge is he's the supreme-top-dog-celebrity-du-jour holding the golden Get Out Of Jail Free card.  Tralalala and fiddle-de-dee. (I'm the President! Can you believe it?)

Lots to cover, but it won't come from me. I can't keep up, let alone make sense of it.  But today a memo surfaced wherein James Comey,  famously canned FBI Director, wrote at the time and for the record that Donald Trump asked him to lay off on an on-going investigation of reluctantly canned National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.  That's a big no-no, but Teflon Don lets this stuff slide off of him.  Lucky for us, those we count on are attempting to stay sane. Things are unraveling, unhinging, getting rather, shall we say, nuts.

And, oh, the foaming! Just today!

What??  That's obstruction of justice! No, it's not! Where's the memo? Why now? Was the convo taped? Nothing to see here. Get those damned leakers!

In that same memo, Comey says Trump started the conversation by telling him he should be throwing reporters who leak classified information in jail.  That was the softball.  Then Trump asked Comey ever so nicely if he couldn't see his way to just let Flynn go.  "He's a good guy", sez Trump.  "Yes, he's a good guy," sez Comey. 

Sigh...

I should be reporting now on what Comey said to Trump but here's the thing: I'm not finding it.  Did he wriggle, did he waffle, did he pretend he didn't hear?  Did he grunt and shrug his big shoulders?  DID HE SAY ANYTHING??

I don't know.

But I just want to say, Go Democrats! I mean it. GO. The ball is in your court. You're in the catbird seat. (Feels good, huh?) You can do this!  Stay calm, get the facts, don't follow dead ends, eyes on the prize. Don't back down. Don't even think about all those other times you thought you had him but you didn't.  Beat the bushes for any Republican wiping tears or rending garments. Bring them into the fold. Don't even hint you're judging the hell out of them. Grab every Independent.  Be nice.

Go, go, go.

Git!

Death to Traffickers in Children - and Nothing Less

(CNN, October 26, 2009)   Law enforcement authorities have recovered 52 children and arrested 60 pimps allegedly involved in child prostitution, the FBI announced Monday.

More than 690 people in all were arrested on state and local charges, the FBI stated.

______________________

I can't let this go.  I WON'T let this go.  As painful as this is to confront, and as near to tears as I am right now, I can't ignore this for another minute.

There are children out there--OUR children--who are being kidnapped, raped, exploited and forced into lives of prostitution and abject misery.  They are CHILDREN. They were babies once.  Infants.  Now they're kids.  They should be living the lives that all kids dream of living.  Free from worry, free from harm, free to be as joyful and as silly and as wonderful as any sitcom kid devised.

In a little over six years, 889 children have been rescued or "recovered" through the efforts of a task force of 34 agencies known as the Innocence Lost National Initiative.   The kids who have now been recovered will never, ever be full time kids again.  Those days, if they ever existed, are behind them.  They may have joyful moments--kids are resilient, after all--but they will carry those days and nights of misery with them forever.

I hate that.

I want those people--the people who did this to our children--dead.  I want them never to walk this earth again, never to inhale the same air we exhale,  never to have one more moment to walk upright among the rest of us.   I don't say this lightly.  I'm not writing this in the heat of passion.  I mean it.

In those six years, there have been around 500 convictions, with some sentences as light as eight years.  The longest sentences work out to around 25 years.  That's not nearly long enough.  When those monsters get out, their victims will still be young enough to have to look ahead to years of persistent nightmares.   What could be worse than knowing your tormentor is walking the streets, free as a bird, free of conscience, human in physiognomy only?

We owe it to the children rescued and to the pitiful children still lost to the child sex trade to become warriors in their name.  We watch animals in the wild protecting their young and think nothing of it.  It's the way of nature, after all.  But where in the wild is exploitation?  What other species of animal creates an environment where helpless, defenseless young are served up to the baser instincts of the most dangerous elements of their kind?   None but humans.

We bring these children into this world.  We're high-minded in our seeming concern for them.  We claim to love them all.  And yet we will not take seriously enough our ability to change their lives for the better. We cannot ignore the enemies of our children.  We are in the frontline of a battle for their very lives.  Every child is a child of ours. We are their only hope.

If it takes a village, we are it.

Innocence Lost National Initiative

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children

The Cyber Tipline

Amber Alert

FBI Crimes Against Children Unit

DOJ National Sex Offender Website


(Cross-posted at Talking Points Memo here)