Comey Memos: Ho Hum

I was on the Howie Carr show a little while ago, talking about the release of James Comey’s memos on his conversations with Donald Trump. Scott has already weighed in on the memos, which you can read in his post or here, and Paul has noted the reaction of Bob Goodlatte, Trey Gowdy and Devin Nunes. These are my thoughts, for what they are worth:

1) The memos do nothing to discredit President Trump. At every stage, he comes across as reasonable, even as described by an enemy. Democrats who try to spin the memos as breathing new life into their collusion campaign must have gotten an early jump on 4/20.

2) Comey, in contrast, comes across as a snake in the grass. Whenever he had a conversation with President-Elect or President Trump, he immediately dictated a self-serving memo of the conversation. He obviously viewed himself as an adversary of the president from the beginning.

I wrote last June about false testimony that Comey gave before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Comey was trying to explain why he wasn’t a weasel, notwithstanding his habit of immediately dictating a CYA memo every time he spoke with the president. Comey self-righteously testified that he had served three presidents, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump. He never dictated memos on his conversations with Bush or Obama, who were honorable men. It was something unique about Trump that caused him to deviate from his usual practice. Senator Warner was impressed: “I think that is very significant.”

Only it was a lie. As recounted in my post, Comey actually dictated an on-the-spot memo about the very conversation with President Bush that he told the Senate committee he “didn’t feel, with President Bush, the need to document it in that way.”

3) One of Comey’s annoying qualities is his vouching, over and over, for the honesty and lack of political bias of everyone in the FBI. President Trump was concerned about Andrew McCabe and twice asked Comey whether McCabe was hostile to him. Comey assured Trump that McCabe is as honest as the day is long–like everyone else at the FBI!–and totally above politics. We now know that McCabe is a liar, and that he hosted a meeting in his office that included Peter Strzok, Lisa Page and perhaps others, in which senior members of the FBI fretted about the remote possibility that Trump might actually win the election.

Trump was right about McCabe, and while it took him longer to figure it out, he ultimately was right about Comey, too.

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