Comeyâs confession: dossier not verified before, or after, FISA warrant
Many people I know in law enforcement circles shuddered when James Comey tweeted recently that acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker âmay not be the sharpest knife in the drawer.â
To them, Comeyâs Twitter attack crossed that âblue lineâ â the one that real cops abide by, to never criticize fellow officers and to always have their backs.
I had a different reaction. I found it odd that a man who started his Twitter career by quoting Bible verses about justice might have forgotten one of the golden utterances from Jesus himself: âHe that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone."
The failures of Comeyâs remarkably turbulent and short tenure as FBI director were on display again Friday on Capitol Hill, when he was interviewed in a closed-door session by two House committees. Republican lawmakers were aghast at his sudden lack of recollection of key events.
He didnât seem to know that his own FBI was using No. 4 Justice Department official Bruce Ohr as a conduit to keep collecting intelligence from Christopher Steele after the British intel operative was fired by the bureau for leaking and lying. In fact, Comey didnât seem to remember knowing that Steele had been terminated, according to sources in the room.
âHis memory was so bad I feared he might not remember how to get out of the room after the interview,â one lawmaker quipped. Lamented another: âIt was like he suddenly developed dementia or Alzheimerâs, after conveniently remembering enough facts to sell his book.â
Faintness of memory is a common symptom for witnesses under the intense spotlight. But lawmakers were relieved when Comey could remember one fact that is essential to understanding if his FBI acted appropriately in the investigation of Donald Trump and Russia.
The towering ex-FBI boss confessed that the FBI had not corroborated much of the Steele dossier before it was submitted as evidence to a secret court to support a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page in the final weeks of the election.
And Comey admitted much of the dossier remained uncorroborated more than six months later when he was fired by President Trump.
I wonât waste too much time harping on the enormity of this confession. Everyday Americans now know that the FISA court process is an honor system and that the FBI may only submit evidence it has verified to the judges.
Comey now has confirmed what Republican lawmakers like Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) have warned about for months â that the FBI used an unverified dossier, paid for by presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party as political opposition research, to justify spying on the duly nominated GOP candidate for president just weeks before Election Day.
But thatâs not the only reason we have to lament Comeyâs tenure as FBI chief. Letâs go to the videotape to review:
First, the Justice Department inspector general found that Comey wrongly usurped the powers of the attorney general when he chose to make his own decision not to prosecute Hillary Clinton in the classified email investigation and that he violated department policies by announcing the re-opening and the closing of the Clinton email case, the latter just days before Election Day.
That finding supported Democratsâ worst fears, that Comey may have cost their candidate the election. And it validated the primary reason the Trump administration fired Comey as FBI director a few months later.
Second, letâs remember that Comey was the man who famously testified in 2016 that FBI agents donât âgive a hoot about politicsâ when they investigate.
A year later, we learned that the very FBI employees Comey entrusted to lead the Clinton and Trump investigations â Peter Strzok and Lisa Page â obsessed over the 2016 election and even discussed in government text messages using their official powers to âstopâ Trump from becoming president. To add to the concerns, the two were having an affair in the middle of a counterintelligence probe, which in and of itself is a compromise.
Third, Comeyâs investigative team (in the form of the Steele dossier) and his general counsel James Baker (in the form of evidence from a Democratic Party lawyer) accepted politically tainted evidence to further the probe of Trump.
Finally, Comey has insisted he didnât condone leaking inside the FBI. Yet, on his watch, top deputy Andrew McCabe was caught leaking to the news media and later fired for lying about it. Comey denies he knew about that leak but acknowledges that he himself orchestrated a separate leak through a friend after his own firing.
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https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/420408-comeys-confession-dossier-not-verified-before-or-after-fisa-warrant#.XAwxrB0BaNQ.twitter