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Ruth King

The ‘Independent’ Mr. Comey His prepared testimony shows why he deserved to be fired.

The Senate Intelligence Committee released James Comey’s prepared testimony a day early on Wednesday, and it looks like a test of whether Washington can apprehend reality except as another Watergate. Perhaps the defrocked FBI director has a bombshell still to drop. But far from documenting an abuse of power by President Trump, his prepared statement reveals Mr. Comey’s misunderstanding of law enforcement in a democracy.

Mr. Comey’s seven-page narrative recounts his nine encounters with the President-elect and then President, including an appearance at Trump Tower, a one-on-one White House dinner and phone calls. He describes how he briefed Mr. Trump on the Russia counterintelligence investigation and what he calls multiple attempts to “create some sort of patronage relationship.”

But at worst Mr. Comey’s account of Mr. Trump reveals a willful and naive narcissist who believes he can charm or subtly intimidate the FBI director but has no idea how Washington works. This is not new information.
When you’re dining alone in the Green Room with an operator like Mr. Comey—calculating, self-protective, one of the more skilled political knife-fighters of modern times—there are better approaches than asserting “I need loyalty, I expect loyalty.” Of course the righteous director was going to “memorialize” (his word) these conversations as political insurance.

Mr. Trump’s ham-handed demand for loyalty doesn’t seem to extend beyond the events of 2016, however. In Mr. Comey’s telling, the President is preoccupied with getting credit for the election results and resentful that the political class is delegitimizing his victory with “the cloud” of Russian interference when he believes he did nothing wrong.

Mr. Comey also confirms that on at least three occasions he told Mr. Trump that he was not a personal target of the Russia probe. But Mr. Comey wouldn’t make a public statement to the same effect, “most importantly because it would create a duty to correct” if Mr. Trump were implicated. This is odd because the real obligation is to keep quiet until an investigation is complete.

More interesting is that Mr. Trump’s frustration at Mr. Comey’s refusal raises the possibility that the source of Mr. Trump’s self-destructive behavior isn’t a coverup or a bid to obstruct the investigation. The source could simply be Mr. Trump’s wounded pride.

The most troubling part of Mr. Comey’s statement is his belief in what he calls “the FBI’s traditionally independent status in the executive branch,” which he invokes more than once. Independent? This is a false and dangerous view of law enforcement in the American system.

Mr. Comey is describing an FBI director who essentially answers to no one. But the police powers of the government are awesome and often abused, and the only way to prevent or correct abuses is to report to elected officials who are accountable to voters. A director must resist intervention to obstruct an investigation, but he and the agency must be politically accountable or risk becoming the FBI of J. Edgar Hoover.

I’m an Attorney General Asking Supreme Court to Uphold Trump’s Travel Ban. Here’s Why. Ken Paxton

Warren Kenneth “Ken” Paxton Jr., is an American lawyer and politician who is the Attorney General of Texas since January 2015. Paxton won election to the state’s top law enforcement job in November 2014 as a champion of the Tea Party movement and conservative principles.
“On Tuesday, I filed a brief urging the Supreme Court to uphold President Donald Trump’s executive order temporarily pausing the entry of foreign nationals from six terror-prone counties.Supreme Court review is needed because the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit recently ruled against the valid executive order. I am leading a multistate coalition asking the Supreme Court to permit the president to exercise his lawful authority to protect the homeland.What the 4th Circuit completely missed is that the executive order is a tailored response to a very real threat to our national security.A pause on entry from countries with heightened security concerns—such as Libya, where authorities arrested suspects linked to the horrific attack in Manchester—is justified to ensure that new arrivals are thoroughly vetted.Liberal activists are upset that Trump is keeping his promise to secure our border, protect our country, and keep Americans safe from acts of terror.Unfortunately, it seems that some federal judges, like the majority of the court that opined against the president’s executive order, are now substituting their “politically desired outcome” for the law, to quote dissenting Judge Paul Niemeyer.

Comey’s Notes and the Wages of the Special Counsel Investigation By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/2017/06/07/comeys-notes-and-the-wages-of-the-special-counsel-investigation/

The editors of the Wall Street Journal detail a controversy brewing in Congress over James Comey’s private memos. We use “private” here in the sense that these are memoranda the former FBI director wrote to himself. They are not “private” in the sense of belonging to Comey; clearly, they are government records of FBI business.

I would wager, moreover, that significant parts of the memos may be classified: Recall the Obama Justice Department’s prosecution of former CIA director David Petraeus. That case centered on journals that General Petraeus had kept when he was commanding American and allied military forces. According to the Justice Department’s outline of the case against Petraeus, his diaries contained highly classified information, including notes of the general’s conversations with the president of the United States. Although Petraeus was under no obligation to make these notes, and although they were clearly (and quite properly) intended for his own use, they were obviously not his property. They related to government business, were thus government files, and — to the extent they contained classified information — were required to be retained in a repository designed to protect such materials.

The Senate Judiciary Committee, in conjunction with its Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, has issued a letter asking Comey to answer a series of questions. These include questions about his memos. Based on a New York Times report, we know only of a snippet of one such memo, said to detail a meeting between the former director and the president. Trump, it is related, expressed hope that the FBI would drop an investigation of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

The Times indicated that Comey may have written many more memos-to-self. The Judiciary Committee letter asks him to provide copies of any such memos he has retained.

The former director is said to have refused, rationalizing that he is now a private citizen and need not comply.

To be sure, we are not talking about a subpoena, which is a lawful demand for production of evidence; the committee’s letter is a request for voluntary cooperation. Nevertheless, the Journal has a point when it argues that Comey, who has voluntarily agreed to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee in highly anticipated testimony on Thursday, should not be able to pick and choose which committees he will indulge and which requests he will entertain.

Naturally, the question arises as to whether Comey is the only source the Judiciary Committee can turn to for the information it seeks. Since any such memos are FBI property, one would think the committee could seek them directly from the FBI and the Justice Department (of which the FBI is a component agency).

Moreover, if Comey is stymying the committee, one might think the Trump administration would want to intervene. Since the president appears to be at odds with the former FBI director over what was said in their various conversations, it could cast the president in a favorable light were he to direct the Justice Department to cooperate with all congressional committees regarding the production of documents.

Alas, we run headlong into the complication discussed here in mid-May, when I was arguing against the appointment of a “special counsel,” particularly in the absence of any apparent crime to be investigated. Special counsels, whom the public thinks as independent prosecutors, tend to paralyze an administration’s capacity to govern and to exercise its judgment.

There is still no crime. Nevertheless, special counsel Robert Mueller has been appointed to head up the sprawl that is spreading under the heading of “the Russia investigation.” This probe lacks a specific criminal transaction to target — i.e., it lacks the thing that gives direction and discipline to other investigations. Thus, virtually anything tangentially connected to Russia’s interference in the 2016 election can be brought into Mueller’s capacious jurisdiction. That includes any discussion the former FBI director had with the president regarding Flynn — even if whatever Flynn is being investigated for (failure to disclose speaking fees in Russia? Failure to register as a foreign agent for work done for Turkey?) turns out to be far afield from Russia’s “cyberespionage” activities during the campaign.

Consequently, the Trump White House must fear that any order it might give the Justice Department to cooperate with the Republican-controlled Congress’s investigations would be spun by Democrats and their media friends as interference with Mueller’s investigation. Similarly, the Judiciary Committee and other congressional investigative bodies do not want to be seen as impeding Mueller. So, they are apt to avoid demanding of him the sorts of documents they would ordinarily demand in conducting oversight of the Justice Department.

The result is that the public is likely to be kept in the dark about many relevant matters that might have become known had there not been a special counsel appointed.

Here is another example of how this could play out at Thursday’s hearing. When the president fired Comey, he took pains to say that the former director had told him on three separate occasions that he was not under investigation. Pre-hearing reporting suggests that Comey does not remember it this way. The matter is thus being teed up as though one or the other man must be lying.

We’ll have to see what happens, but to my mind, the seeming contradiction may be reconcilable. According to Comey’s own prior testimony, the Russia investigation is a counterintelligence investigation. As I have repeatedly pointed out, a counterintelligence investigation is very different from a criminal investigation. It does not have “subjects” and “targets,” which are terms-of-art in criminal investigations, designating suspects who may be indicted by the grand jury. The purpose of a counterintelligence investigation is to focus on a foreign power — in this instance, Russia — in order to determine what threats it might pose to American interests.

It is not the purpose of a counterintelligence investigation to build a prosecutable criminal case against a suspect. Nevertheless, if evidence of criminal wrongdoing turns up, the FBI’s national security division reserves the right to refer that evidence to its criminal division and the Justice Department, which can then determine whether prosecution is warranted.

It could well be that President Trump, a non-lawyer, was told the Russia investigation is a counterintelligence investigation, which would not be designed to build a case against him or anyone else.

If so, he might understandably have taken that to mean he is not a suspect under investigation. At the same time, Comey realizes that you never know what evidence an investigation will turn up until it has been completed. Since the Russia investigation had not been completed, the former director may well believe that could not, and did not, make commitments regarding any information that had not yet been uncovered.

That’s just my educated speculation — and, as noted above, we’ll have to see what happens. But given the complications posed by the special counsel investigation, I doubt we are going to get to the bottom of all the questions that need answering in a Senate committee hearing.

Donald Trump, Europe’s Best Friend By:Srdja Trifkovic

According to the media machine and pundits on both sides of the Atlantic, President Trump’s recent attendance at two summits—in Brussels (NATO) and Sicily (G7)—went very badly. He went through many tense encounters, made a number of statements his interlocutors did not like, notably on the uneven burden of defense costs, on his dislike of the Paris climate change accords, and on German trade sufficits. Significantly, he sounded lukewarm on NATO’s Article 5 (“all for one, one for all”). Some Europeans tried to score a few domestic points by exploiting latent anti-Americanism in their encounters with Trump, notably the newly elected French president Emmanuel Macron with that now famous gladiatorial handshake.

According to The Guardian, Trump’s visist has left the continent’s leaders aghast, but at the same time it has had one unexpected positive consequence. Just like the Soviet threat forced Europeans to focus on what they had in common and how to protect it, this theory goes, Trump’s attitudes may help improve Europe’s ability to integrate: “The continent’s interests lie in making sure the toxicity of Trump is somehow curtailed. That can only happen if it sets new ambitions for itself. Just weeks after Emmanuel Macron’s electoral victory in France brought a major moment of solace, Trump’s tour will have starkly reminded Europeans of the new world of uncertainties, and the need to pull together.”

According to another commentator writing in the same organ of Britain’s leftist bein pensants, “In truth, Trump’s mixture of vulgarity, arrogance, ignorance and rudeness makes Europeans secretly feel extremely good about their own sophistication and civilised manners. Contrasts can be soothing. Just as Europeans decided Brexit needed to be dealt with in unity . . . Trump is fast turning into a binding factor.” In brief, the postnational elite loathes Trump and wants a new global strategy “for a world where, every so often, the US electoral cycle produces a corrupt, deluded isolationist who can think only in monosyllables.”

This sentiment was reflected in German chancellor Angela Merkel’s unusually blunt statement at an election rally in Munich last weekend: “We Europeans truly have to take our fate into our own hands,” she said, “naturally in friendship with the United States of America, in friendship with Great Britain, as good neighbors with whoever, also with Russia and other countries. But we have to know that we Europeans must fight for our own future and destiny. The times in which we could rely fully on others, they are to some extent over. This is what I experienced in the last few days.”

In Europe Merkel’s statement caused an instant sensation. In America the globalist establishment predictably chastised Trump for undermining our partnerships and alliances of long standing. Richard Haass, president of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, called Merkel’s comments a “watershed,” and warned that the resulting scenario is “what U.S. has sought to avoid” since World War II. On the whole it would be very welcome news if the German Chancellor really meant what she said, but there is less than meets the eye.

If Merkel was serious, over 50,000 American soldiers can finally be withdrawn from Germany, where their stay has not had any military-strategic justification for the past twenty-six years. She is loath to do so, because their upkeep at the U.S. taxpayers’ expense is a boon to the German economy. If she seeks military self-reliance, then Germany—with the GDP of $3.4 trillion—will have to spend considerably more on defense in the future than the miserly 1.2 percent she is spending at the moment. It seems, however, that Merkel still wants to have it both ways: the days of full reliance on the United States are over, she says, but only “to some extent.”

The real meaning of Merkel’s words is clear if we replace “we Europeans” with “I” or “we Germans.” In addition to “the Russian threat,” Trump’s “unpredictability” is a perfect excuse for Euro-federalists to push for a massive restructuring of Europe’s political, economic, military, and trade strategies in order to turn the EU into a superstate, a German-led geopolitical player in its own right. The oligarchs in Brussels can hardly wait: after an icy meeting with Trump, the European Council president Donald Tusk declared that “the greatest task today is the consolidation of the free world around values, not just interests.” Merkel’s and the superstaters’ long-term hope is that Trump will be a single-term president, but that the consequences of their “taking fate into their own hands” and imposing an ever-tighter union will be permanent.

London Attacks Followed by Same Old Stale Arguments We are in a rut. By Jonah Goldberg

The saddest part about the recent terrorist attacks in the U.K. — aside from the actual horror for the victims and their families, of course — was that there was so little new to say about it.

But that didn’t stop anyone. Everyone backed into their usual rhetorical corners, filling in the blanks on the familiar post-terror conversation like it was a game of Mad Libs, only none of the answers were particularly funny.

I, for one, could easily recycle one of umpteen columns on how the Left’s response is wrong and why we have to shed our dysfunctional aversion to speaking plainly about the nature of the threat and what is required to fight it. Or I could note that President’s Trump’s response to the attack was less than helpful. But to what end? Who hasn’t heard the arguments a thousand times already?

Watching cable news and surveying the algae blooms of “hot takes” on Twitter, it’s hard to imagine anything will dramatically change. We are growing numb to the problem as it becomes part of the background noise of daily life. One of the attackers in London was even featured in a 2016 TV documentary titled The Jihadi Next Door.

Contrast the reactions to the London attacks and to Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris accord. A writer for The Nation spoke for many when he assured readers that “this is murder” and a “crime against humanity.” No sane liberal condoned the terrorist attacks, but the condemnations seemed rote, while passion was reserved for admonishing those who made too big a deal of them or flirted with “Islamophobia.”

In 2014, Jeremy Corbyn, who has a remote but possible chance of being the next British prime minister, argued that supporting the Islamic State is just another “political point of view” and that the government shouldn’t put up “legal obstacles” to Islamic State fighters trying to return to England. This perspective hasn’t cost him much with his admirers on the left, but I have to wonder what the reaction would be if he described climate-change “denial” as just another political point of view.

But there I go, falling into the familiar trap of scoring ideological points rather than dealing with the larger truth. And what truth is that? Simply that we are in a rut when it comes to terrorism.

The Ariana Grande concert attack in Manchester did generate more than the usual passion because lots of pundits and policymakers, never mind television viewers, have teenage daughters they could imagine attending an event like that.

But did you hear about the bombing of a popular ice-cream parlor in Baghdad last week? Families taking their kids there for a post-fast treat were blown to bits by the Islamic State.

Fake Security Is More Dangerous Than No Security How the “Improved Visa Waiver Program” creates the perilous illusion of security. Michael Cutler

Once again terrorists have attacked and wounded and killed innocent civilians in London, England.

On June 3rd a terrorist attack at London Bridge and Borough Market was carried out by three apparent Jihadists who used a rented van to mow down pedestrians, whereupon the three emerged from that van and attacked still more victims with their knives.

The terrorists have applied to their attacks the principle behind Occam’s razor, that postulates that in attempting to understand how something is accomplished, the simplest solution is most likely the correct solution.

In the case of terrorists, using a simple strategy and crude weapons such as motor vehicles and knives that are readily available, decreases the likelihood that such plots can be discovered and prevented before they are carried out.

While the TSA, was created in the wake of the terror attacks of 9/11 and its FY 2017 Budget of $7.6 billion and more than 42,000 employees exist to safeguard transportation, with particular emphasis on airliners, most terror attacks do not involve airliners.

Continuing with the concept of Occam’s razor, the United States needs to do whatever is possible and reasonable to prevent international terrorists from entering the United States in the first place.

All vulnerabilities must, therefore be effectively addressed.

If an ounce of protection is worth a pound of cure, preventing the entry of such terrorists represents a ton of cure.

As I have noted in a recent article, Border Security Is National Security.

The Treasonous Secession of Climate Confederacy States Prosecute Governor Daniel Greenfield

After President Trump rejected the Paris Climate treaty, which had never been ratified by the Senate, the European Union announced that it would work with a climate confederacy of secessionist states.

Scotland and Norway’s environmental ministers have mentioned a focus on individual American states. And the secessionist governments of California, New York and Washington have announced that they will unilaterally and illegally enter into a foreign treaty rejected by the President of the United States.

The Constitution is very clear about this. “No state shall enter into any treaty.” Governor Cuomo of New York has been equally clear. “New York State is committed to meeting the standards set forth in the Paris Accord regardless of Washington’s irresponsible actions.”

Cuomo’s statement conveniently comes in French, Chinese and Russian translations.

“It is a little bold to talk about the China-California partnership as though we were a separate nation, but we are a separate nation,” Governor Brown of California announced.

In an interview with the Huffington Post, the radical leftist described California as “a real nation-state”.

Brown was taking a swing through China to reassure the Communist dictatorship of California’s loyalty to an illegal treaty at the same time as EU boss Juncker was bashing America and kissing up to Premier Li Keqiang at the EU-China summit. It’s one thing when the EU and China form a united front against America. It’s quite another when California and China form a united front against America.

The Climate Alliance of California, New York, Washington, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Oregon, Colorado, Hawaii, Virginia and Rhode Island looks a lot like the Confederacy’s Montgomery Convention. Both serve as meeting points for a secessionist alliance of states to air their grievances against the Federal government over an issue in which they are out of step with the nation.

“We’re a powerful state government. We have nine other states that agree with us,” Brown boasted.

Two more and Jim Jones’ old pal could have his own confederacy.

FBI Raids Dearborn Home in Connection with National Security Investigation By Debra Heine

The FBI conducted a raid in Dearborn, Michigan, last Thursday night, taking one person into custody in connection with a national security investigation. Federal investigators reportedly blocked off the street and spent several hours at the home gathering evidence. They also told the local media that there was no immediate threat to public safety in metro Detroit.

Neighbors told Fox 2 that a Lebanese family consisting of a husband, wife, two kids, and an elderly woman moved into the house only about a month ago.

The multi-jurisdictional investigation started in New York, and according to sources, involved a target who might have been giving support to a terrorist organization.

Via Click on Detroit:

Residents watched and wondered what the FBI SWAT team was doing at the home on Jonathan Street. Several neighbors said dozens of law enforcement officials from multiple agencies blocked the street and searched the home.

Nobody answered the door, but Ken Donaldson, who cuts most of the lawns on Jonathan Street, said everyone on the street is nice. He said it shows that a national security operation can happen anywhere.

“Every time we catch one person, it’s a plus for the overall goal,” Donaldson said. “If they eliminate that kind of terrorism, every step is a plus.”

Former Detroit FBI boss Andy Arena said the fact that neighbors weren’t evacuated, and that there was no imminent threat, means there weren’t terrorist bombs or weapons in the home.

“If that was there, if there was a threat, the FBI would have gotten the neighbors, the people in the neighborhood, out of there,” Arena said.

Sources said the raid was a joint terrorism task force case of “providing money and/or material support to a terrorist organization.” The target lived in New York, but recently moved to Dearborn.

According to Arab America News, a local outlet in Dearborn, the man taken into custody is Samer ElDebek, who works as a truck driver.

Dennis Michael Lynch reported:

He was returned to New York “on federal charges of providing material support or resources to foreign terrorist organizations, and receiving military-type training from them,” the AAnews stated.

ElDebek reportedly had lived in New York, then went to Lebanon eight years ago. AAnews said he returned to New York last year, then moved to Dearborn about 10 months ago.

A warrant issued a day before the raid stated that the FBI believed ElDebek had explosive materials, and/or a manual on how to make them. Included in the dozens of boxes the agents seized from the home were reportedly “over 90 sparkling birthday candles and several high-powered Shot Grizzly fireworks.” The family denied owning the fireworks, claiming they belonged to a neighbor who shared the same garage.

Contrary to some reports from alt-right outlets, the raid had nothing to do with Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin.

The ‘Private’ Jim Comey Some good questions the former FBI chief prefers not to answer.

The media are pitching James Comey’s Thursday testimony as the biggest since Watergate, and the former FBI director may provide high Trump ian drama. Let’s hope Congress also challenges Mr. Comey on matters he’d rather not talk about.

The politically savvy Mr. Comey has a knack for speaking in congenial forums such as the clubby Senate Intelligence Committee he’ll address Thursday. By contrast he is refusing to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee—where he came under a grilling in May, days before he was fired—though there is no bar to him testifying more than once.

Circa News is also reporting (and we have confirmed) that Mr. Comey is refusing to answer seven questions sent to him in a letter from Judiciary on May 26. The bipartisan request is from Republican Chairman Chuck Grassley and ranking Democrat Dianne Feinstein, as well as the chairman and ranking Member of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism.

The questions are aimed at discovering how the contents of Mr. Comey’s famous “memo” to himself came to be splashed across the press. This still private memo reportedly says President Trump asked Mr. Comey to back off an investigation into former National Security AdviserMichael Flynn, and its contents surfaced in the New York Times not long after Mr. Comey was fired—courtesy of an unidentified Comey “associate.”

The Judiciary letter asks if Mr. Comey created other memos about interactions with Justice Department officials or Mr. Trump; if he shared the contents of his memos with people inside or outside the Justice Department; if he retained copies of the memos, and if so to turn them over to the committee.

We’re told Mr. Comey replied via email that he didn’t have to answer the questions because he is now a “private citizen.” But that same private citizen will be opining in front of a national TV audience before a committee investigating serious questions of law and intelligence. Mr. Comey shouldn’t be able to pick and choose which of his memos he sends to Congress and which he can keep for his memoirs. If Mr. Comey wrote those memos while FBI director, as his talkative pals claim, the memos are government work product and he has a duty to provide them to investigators.

The “private citizen” excuse is useful in that it exposes that Mr. Comey’s main goal will be providing testimony against Mr. Trump while reviving his own reputation. Tip for Thursday viewing: Notice if Mr. Comey answers questions selectively, ducking those he doesn’t like behind the cover of Robert Mueller’s special-counsel investigation.

The Intelligence Committee shouldn’t let him get away with it. If Mr. Comey wants a public stage to tell his side of the Trump story, fair enough. But he should also be required to provide actual copies of his memos (if they exist), disclose with whom he shared them, and where they are now stored. He should also tell the country if President Trump was a target of the Russia investigation while he supervised it at the FBI.

Oh, and someone should also ask Mr. Comey if it’s true, as the Washington Post has reported, that the FBI probe of Hillary Clinton’s emails was triggered by a phony document provided by Russian intelligence. The point of this Congressional oversight is to help the public understand how Russia tried to meddle with American democracy, and Mr. Comey’s duty didn’t end with his dismissal.

Are You Sitting Down? John Manning, the new dean of Harvard Law, is a conservative.

These pages have been reporting on the intellectual decline of American higher education, but maybe all is not lost. One near-miraculous sign of life is the appointment of constitutional law professor John Manning as the next dean of Harvard Law School.

Mr. Manning, who joined the law school faculty in 2004, takes over a post on July 1 that is typically held by a liberal, most notably by current Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan. He is a well-known expert on administrative law and statutory interpretation who doesn’t hide his jurisprudential conservatism.

The new dean has served two stints at the Justice Department and clerked for the late Justice Antonin Scalia, as well as the late Judge Robert Bork on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Following that distinguished tutelage, Mr. Manning has become one of the premier textualists in the legal academy, meaning that he emphasizes the importance of lawyers and judges reading and interpreting the plain text of a law.

Mr. Manning has been deputy dean and perhaps his competence in that role made him a natural choice for promotion. But in an academy that usually treats conservatives like the walking dead, credit Harvard for promoting on merit regardless of ideology.