Liberal Forum

Misty » 09 Jun 2017 2:17 pm » wrote:Once again 45 throws one of his own people under the bus.

One of the striking moments in the Senate hearing was Comey’s account of his odd response to former Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s request that he speak of the Department of Justice’s investigation of the Clinton corruption charges as a “matter,” and not an “investigation.” In this instance, Comey himself was at risk, so he did not let the matter lie silent. He flat out asked her whether her request was an order and only made the requested statement when he was assured that it was. His own explanation was that “this isn’t a hill worth dying” for.

Comey’s conduct was more damning than his flip remark lets on. Lynch ordered Comey to make a false statement about a matter of intense public interest and concern. Lynch’s foolish request “endeavored,” to use the statutory term, to tamp down the FBI investigation in order to create some political breathing room for the Clinton campaign. Comey should have told Lynch that he was not going to participate in a transparent ruse, period. Perhaps both he and Lynch were guilty of obstruction of justice.

His unwillingness to do so casts a harsher light on Comey’s effort to go slow on, and then abort, the Clinton e-mail investigation, when her destruction of government emails received on her unauthorized server constituted a textbook form of obstruction. Comey’s own July 5, 2016 statement, however, butchered a law that imposed criminal responsibility for the unauthorized use of a server, either intentionally or with gross negligence. His response was that while “we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws
governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”


But the intention to violate the law is no part of the government’s case:
all that matters was that she knew that she used an unauthorized server, a point beyond dispute. And there is no distinction between “gross negligence” on the one hand and “extreme carelessness” on the other
. Comey insisted at that time that “no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.” Indeed, any claim that the evidence against Clinton was weak on intent is only credible because of Comey's legal errors. In fact, the requisite mens rea in the Clinton case was indisputable. But, more to the point, why would any reasonable prosecutor then choose to turn Trump’s one remark into a criminal case of obstruction where the intent evidence is, to say the least, subject to multiple interpretations?


Ironically, a possible case for obstruction of justice might be brought against Comey himself.
http://www.hoover.org/research/cagey-mr-comey