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"The Comey putsch"
The Daily 202
The Daily 202: Firing FBI director Comey is already backfiring on Trump. It’s only going to get worse.
By James Hohmann May 10 at 10:24 AM
....
-- Trump doesn’t grasp it yet, but firing Comey will only lead to more, and louder, questions about Russia, as well as what exactly Trump knew about Flynn and when he knew it. Sometimes it turns out that the simplest explanation is the correct one. Is it possible that the president kept his national security adviser in the White House for 18 days after he’d been warned by the acting attorney general that he had been “compromised” and was vulnerable to “blackmail” by Russia because he had authorized the conversations in question?
“The Comey putsch heightens the mystery at the center of the Flynn case,” David Ignatius, who first broke the news of Flynn’s conversations with the Russian ambassador, writes in a must-read column. “Trump has been digging a hole for himself from the beginning on Russia-related issues. It’s an odd pattern of behavior. Trump may have done nothing improper involving Russia, but why does he act so defensive? In a book called ‘Spy the Lie,’ a group of former intelligence officers explain the behavioral and linguistic cues that indicate when someone is being deceptive. Interestingly, many of these are evident in Trump’s responses to questions about Russia’s covert involvement in U.S. politics. The authors’ list of tip-offs includes ‘going into attack mode,’ ‘inappropriate questions,’ ‘inconsistent statements,’ ‘selective memory’ and the use of ‘qualifiers,’ such as ‘frankly,’ ‘honestly’ and ‘truthfully.’ The authors’ point is that people who are innocent answer questions simply and directly.”
....
-- The excuse given by the administration does not pass the smell test. The official line is that Comey was fired because senior Justice Department officials concluded that he had violated Justice Department principles and procedures last year by publicly discussing the investigation of Clinton’s use of a private email server. Newly installed Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein wrote up a document to justify the move, which Sessions and Trump then signed off on.
....
The editor of the conservative Weekly Standard made another important observation about the memo:
....
James Hohmann is a national political correspondent for The Washington Post. Follow @JamesHohmann
The Daily 202: Firing FBI director Comey is already backfiring on Trump. It’s only going to get worse.
By James Hohmann May 10 at 10:24 AM
....
-- Trump doesn’t grasp it yet, but firing Comey will only lead to more, and louder, questions about Russia, as well as what exactly Trump knew about Flynn and when he knew it. Sometimes it turns out that the simplest explanation is the correct one. Is it possible that the president kept his national security adviser in the White House for 18 days after he’d been warned by the acting attorney general that he had been “compromised” and was vulnerable to “blackmail” by Russia because he had authorized the conversations in question?
“The Comey putsch heightens the mystery at the center of the Flynn case,” David Ignatius, who first broke the news of Flynn’s conversations with the Russian ambassador, writes in a must-read column. “Trump has been digging a hole for himself from the beginning on Russia-related issues. It’s an odd pattern of behavior. Trump may have done nothing improper involving Russia, but why does he act so defensive? In a book called ‘Spy the Lie,’ a group of former intelligence officers explain the behavioral and linguistic cues that indicate when someone is being deceptive. Interestingly, many of these are evident in Trump’s responses to questions about Russia’s covert involvement in U.S. politics. The authors’ list of tip-offs includes ‘going into attack mode,’ ‘inappropriate questions,’ ‘inconsistent statements,’ ‘selective memory’ and the use of ‘qualifiers,’ such as ‘frankly,’ ‘honestly’ and ‘truthfully.’ The authors’ point is that people who are innocent answer questions simply and directly.”
....
-- The excuse given by the administration does not pass the smell test. The official line is that Comey was fired because senior Justice Department officials concluded that he had violated Justice Department principles and procedures last year by publicly discussing the investigation of Clinton’s use of a private email server. Newly installed Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein wrote up a document to justify the move, which Sessions and Trump then signed off on.
....
The editor of the conservative Weekly Standard made another important observation about the memo:
The Rosenstein memo is dated...today. So there was no real recommendation from DOJ. Trump wanted to do it, and they created a paper trail.
Link to tweet
....
James Hohmann is a national political correspondent for The Washington Post. Follow @JamesHohmann
