Posted on 04/21/2018 11:17:04 PM PDT by MarvinStinson
Former attorney general feels previous president signaled then-FBI director to let Hillary 'off' the hook to protect himself
Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey accused James Comey of exonerating 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton after former President Barack Obama warned the then-FBI director to “let her off” the hook.
Comey, whom President Donald Trump fired in May 2017, led the FBI’s investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server to conduct official business as secretary of state. During an interview Friday on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle,” Mukasey said Obama wanted Comey to let Clinton “off” the hook because Obama believed, “If you wind up accusing her, you wind up accusing me.”
“President Obama was sending messages and receiving messages on Hillary Clinton’s private email server,” Mukasey said. “Jim Comey knew that, and when President Obama went on television and said, ‘There’s no issue here, she didn’t really intend to cause harm,’ what he was really saying in essence is, ‘You’d better let her off, because if you wind up accusing her, you wind up accusing me.'”
“Comey followed that lead. And the notion that this was somehow something that he had to do for the welfare of the country, there’s a lot of disingenuous claptrap,” Mukasey continued, calling Comey’s handling of the Clinton probe “outrageous.”
The Department of Justice's (DOJ) Office of Inspector General (OIG) is now investigating whether Comey gave one of his friends memos regarding his conversations with Trump that included information he knew was classified, a "source familiar with the probe" confirmed to Fox News.
Steven Mulroy, a former federal prosecutor, told Fox News host Laura Ingraham that Comey did not leak classified information to his friend.
"We won't know for sure until the inspector general has concluded his investigation about what all the facts are for sure. But The Wall Street Journal has reported that there were only two memos that Comey gave to his friend that had any classified information," said Mulroy (shown above, far right).
"In one of them, [Comey] went through and redacted out the classified information. And the other one wasn't classified at the time. It was only classified later on," Mulroy claimed. "So it seems like his course of conduct here was fairly ... inoffensive. You can't very well blame him if the document wasn't classified until a later point in time."
But Mukasey refuted those claims, telling Ingraham, "I think we ought to put to rest something that one of your last guests said on the last segment about how, 'Well, the memos weren't marked classified at the time.'"
"They were classified as soon as [Comey] wrote them," Mukasey said. "And those weren't Mr. Comey's memos. They were the government's memos. And the information in them, if it was classified, was classified as soon as he put it down on paper."
"Personal thoughts and reflections are fine, but if they are personal thoughts and reflections about classified information, then they are classified personal thoughts and reflections," Mukasey continued. "You can't simply take them out and leak them."
Former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Thomas H. Dupree Jr. (shown above, far left) told Ingraham that even Comey's "defenders" must admit "he's walking a very fine line here" in defending his leaking during his press circuit promoting his new book, "A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership."
Related: Mukasey: Comey Is 'Always the Hero of Every Story He Tells'
"If the difference between criminal jeopardy and innocence is where you draw the line ... I mean, my goodness — I wouldn't want to be in Jim Comey's shoes if the IG is digging into these memos line by line trying to see if he might have left something in that shouldn't have gone out the door," Dupree said.
Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.), a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, told Ingraham that "it's important to point out that was malicious leaking of government documents" on Comey's part.
"I asked [FBI Director] Christopher Wray under oath, 'Is it appropriate for FBI agents to leak their work product to the press?' And he said, 'Absolutely not,'" said DeSantis (above, second from right). "I do think [Comey's] facing exposure because some of that stuff very well may have been classified."
"The damage is enormous because the head of the organization becomes the figurehead that everybody looks to judge how the organization performs."
"But at the end of the day, this is a guy who took those documents, [and] he wanted to generate a special counsel" to investigate allegations of Trump-Russia collusion, DeSantis said. "This thing smells very badly, and I think he's going to have to answer more questions about that."
Dupree said that "one of the many tragedies" in this saga is that Comey's behavior during and after his tenure as FBI director "undercuts" the FBI's historical image as a "nonpartisan, independent law enforcement agency."
Mukasey concurred, saying, "Regrettably, I think the damage is enormous because the head of the organization becomes the figurehead that everybody looks to judge how the organization performs."
Former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Thomas H. Dupree Jr. said that “one of the many tragedies” in this saga is that Comey’s behavior during and after his tenure as FBI director “undercuts” the FBI’s historical image as a “nonpartisan, independent law enforcement agency.”
This fits with Comey’s very damning and strange exoneration. I suspected he was leveraged to let her off but had his revenge in damning her while doing so, then bringing up issue again the last week of the election.
Paraphrased Comey said: She’s guilty as hell but we can’t prosecute.
I think felony clinton made it known to comrade obama that if she went down she was taking him with her.
But Mukasey said, “I think we ought to put to rest something that one of your last guests said on the last segment about how, ‘Well, the memos weren’t marked classified at the time.’”
“They were classified as soon as [Comey] wrote them,” Mukasey said. “And those weren’t Mr. Comey’s memos. They were the government’s memos. And the information in them, if it was classified, was classified as soon as he put it down on paper.”
“Personal thoughts and reflections are fine, but if they are personal thoughts and reflections about classified information, then they are classified personal thoughts and reflections,” Mukasey continued. “You can’t simply take them out and leak them.”
I have always thought that Mukasey would have been a good choice to adjudicate many parts of the current situation, and would have been a far better choice than Mueller as independent counsel. And one thing that he says that I have not heard anyone else say, except for me, is that when the director of the FBI has a conversation with the president, or when the Secretary of State writes a memo to someone working for her in another country, that message is classified when it is written. It is classified before the pen lifts off the paper. It does not have to go to some third party to decide whether that message is classified or not. It is in a default condition of being classified at the moment that it is written.
classified at the moment that it is written.
So in the words of the Anti-Trumpers, Obama obstructed an investigation.
Yes sir.
Yes it all makes sense.
But Mukasey is the first ex-senior official to bring it up.
Its about time.
I thought as much from the moment the first news of the unofficial mail server came out. The entire Obama administration was implicated, because, heck, she was secretary of state, communicating with everyone, and they could not help knowing she was committing an egregious breach of security. Obama or her colleagues should have stopped it immediately, but no, they colluded, and God knows what else they did.
The only question I have is why they let her do it. She had some “pull” sufficient to obtain this concession?
Guilty! bump
They better go after these scumbag leftists HARD, while we can. Start e mailing your Rep’s. people!
Lookee, lookee, lookee, Andrew McCabe and James Comey on the criminal hookey,.......
Lookee, lookie, lookie, Obama, Clinton, Clapper, will soon join them boys on the criminal hookey.
Stay tuned folks, the end game is just getting under way!!!
I don’t quite agree with the idea that Comey “ had his
revenge in damning her while doing so, then bringing
up the issue again the last week of the election”.
To me “revenge” sounds like Comey actually had wanted to
do the the right thing but was prevented from doing so
by Obama. The reason for Comey’s tortured explanation
was to acknowledge that Clinton did wrong but that her
behavior did not rise to the level of a prrosecutable
crime. Sure he knew it was bogus but he had to chastise
her in some way.
Comey’s temporary reopening of the investigation just
before the election that put Democrat panties in
a twist after the election was necessary in Comey’s
mind because NYC law enforcement found dirt on Hillary.
Comey calculated that Hillary would win anyway and he
wanted to look like he was doing his job. He had to say
something. If Hillary had won the election he figured
she would forgive him for his last minute “indiscretion”
because he fixed the issue for her after the fact. He hoped
to be President Hillary’s little FBI fixer boy.
One of the many consequences of Comey’s narcissism is the damage to the FBI’s credibility. Many criminal cases are won or lost in the strength of the public’s perception of the trustworthiness of individual agents and their evidence,
The agency may never recover.
I called her HRC22@clintonmail.com to the attention of diplomatic security... never got a promotion and was called I to my ambassadors o office for a herbal reprimand... and amb did not know nor did he allow me to explain why he was in the predicament that DC was calling me in on the carpet.
There’s more to it than Obama being “accidentally” implicated because his emails to her wound up on this illegal email server.
Remember in 2009 how he wouldn’t give up his insecure BlackBerry even though the Secret Service wanted him to? Remember how members of his government have been found to have used false identities to send emails to each other?
I believe it has been said that Obama himself had an alias that he used for emails to Clinton and others.
As I said many times on many Obama threads, “ you don’t think he was really playing golf all that time, do you?”
Running a secret anti-constitutional government takes a lot of time.
Hillary’s emails are the tip of a much bigger iceberg, with Obama and whoever was running him at the center of it.
Obsma damaged this country beyond repair.
But that is why he was put there in the first place. Do not think for one minute that people did not know who Obama really was. The so called elites (only in their mind) want a one world government and the only thing standing in their way is the USA. They need to destroy this country one way or another. Once it is gone humanity will be enslaved but they will not call it slavery. All of the government heads will be a part of this. They will become wardens keeping each country under control.
They are already using the global warming and everything else that they can to manipulate the people. Television and the media are how they already control most of the population. They use subliminal messages and methods in television that were originally outlawed when they were tried back in the 1950’s anf 1960’s. But most most people will deny this, just as they deny and turn a blind eye to corruption. The next step is a worldwide depression. Then some smart ass politician will say that he is the only one that can save the world. Just look at how easily people followed Obama.
At that point may God help us.
Hillary Clinton, that witch? A crass commie one world order whore. A Sorosian Candidate. A money grubber extraordinaire. A shrill crooked opportunist with limitless greed. Hillary Clinton honored by tinsel town twits and media mavens and malarkist of print and tele.
With this said, I warm to both knowing we had to endure their nonsense for 8 of the past 9 years to get Donald J. Trump.
Best President Ever!
I wonder if the word “Arkancide” ever entered the conversation? Maybe THAT was the leverage.
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