Comey circus testimony makes one thing clear: Dems need to put up or shut up
(National Sentinel) The Comey Show: Following several hours of testimony that was dotted with bombshell revelations here and there not related to anything President Donald J. Trump or his administration have done wrong, it’s become quite clear that the obstructionist Democrats in Congress, along with their puppet masters in the “mainstream media,” are on the clock.
It’s time to put up or shut up when it comes to saddling the president with any crimes.
Democrats and Left-wing pundits tried to spin a huge loss yesterday into a victory on various cable news programs and online, claiming that Comey’s testimony, in which he called the president of the United States a liar (remember the outrage when Obama was rightfully called out as a liar by a Republican?), somehow “proves” that Trump…did something.
But “collusion” with Russia? Nope. Comey squelched that – to the point, even, that Alt-Left goofball Chris Matthews on MSNBC had to admit there is no there there. During his testimony, Comey not only said he never felt that Trump tried to impede his Russia investigation, that the president actually encouraged it, that Trump also made clear he supported the FBI’s probe into “satellite” members of his administration, and that former national security advisor Micheal Flynn was not central to the Russia investigation.
“The assumption of the critics of the president, of his pursuers, you might say, is that somewhere along the line in the last year is the president had something to do with colluding with the Russians … to affect the election in some way,” Matthews said on MSNBC, after the testimony.
“And yet what came apart this morning was that theory,” Matthews said, listing two reasons why. First, he said Comey revealed that “Flynn wasn’t central to the Russian investigation,” and secondly, he said that kills the idea that Flynn might have been in a position to testify against Trump.
“And if that’s not the case, where’s the there-there?” Matthews said, as reported by the Washington Examiner.
With the ‘collusion’ narrative destroyed, Democrats then immediately pivoted to the “obstruction of justice” narrative, in which Comey was asked directly whether he felt Trump’s request for the FBI to curtail its Flynn investigation rose to that level.
He said he couldn’t say. That’s a bald-faced lie.
Comey is a seasoned Justice Department veteran (former Asst. U.S. Attorney General) and former U.S. district attorney; he knows what the standard is for obstruction of justice. If Trump’s statements rose to that level, he had a duty to report it to Congress and the Dept. of Justice. He didn’t. So he purposely evaded that question during his public testimony to further fuel Democratic allegations that the president has committed a crime.
Liberal constitutional law professor and attorney Alan Dershowitz, not a Trump voter, disagrees. In a column for the Washington Examiner he wrote that history, precedence and the lack of actual evidence does not support Democrats’ claims:
Comey’s written statement, which was released in advance of his Thursday testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, does not provide evidence that Trump committed obstruction of justice or any other crime. Indeed it strongly suggests that even under the broadest reasonable definition of obstruction, no such crime was committed.
The crucial conversation occurred in the Oval Office on Feb. 14 between the president and then-Director Comey. According to Comey’s contemporaneous memo, the president expressed his opinion that retired Gen. Flynn “is a good guy.”
Comey replied, “He is a good guy.”
The president said, “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this thing go.”
Comey understood that to be a reference only to the Flynn investigation and not “the broader investigation into Russia or possible links to the campaign.” Comey had already told the president that “we were not investigating him personally.”
Comey understood “the President to be requesting that we drop any investigation of Flynn in connection with false statements about his conversations with the Russian ambassador in December.”
Comey did not say he would “let this go,” and indeed he did not grant the president’s request to do so. Nor did Comey report this conversation to the attorney general or any other prosecutor.
[…]
Throughout United States history — from Presidents Adams to Jefferson to Lincoln to Roosevelt to Kennedy to Obama — presidents have directed (not merely requested) the Justice Department to investigate, prosecute (or not prosecute) specific individuals or categories of individuals.
It is only recently that the tradition of an independent Justice Department and FBI has emerged. But traditions, even salutary ones, cannot form the basis of a criminal charge.
[…]
A president cannot be charged with a crime for properly exercising his constitutional authority.
For the same reason, Trump cannot be charged with obstruction for firing Comey, which he had the constitutional authority to do.
In a separate column for Fox News, Dershowitz elaborated, noting that Democrats are endangering civil liberties and the rule of law (on purpose, no doubt) by clouding this issue in their efforts to derail a president they loathe:
In his testimony former FBI director James Comey echoed a view that I alone have been expressing for several weeks, and that has been attacked by nearly every Democratic pundit.
Comey confirmed that under our Constitution, the president has the authority to direct the FBI to stop investigating any individual. I paraphrase, because the transcript is not yet available: the president can, in theory, decide who to investigate, who to stop investigating, who to prosecute and who not to prosecute. The president is the head of the unified executive branch of government, and the Justice Department and the FBI work under him and he may order them to do what he wishes.
As a matter of law, Comey is 100 percent correct. As I have long argued, and as Comey confirmed in his written statement, our history shows that many presidents—from Adams to Jefferson, to Lincoln, to Roosevelt, to Kennedy, to Bush 1, and to Obama – have directed the Justice Department with regard to ongoing investigations. The history is clear, the precedents are clear, the constitutional structure is clear, and common sense is clear.
Yet virtually every Democratic pundit, in their haste to “get” President Trump, has willfully ignored these realities. In doing so they have endangered our civil liberties and constitutional rights.
So we’re now a juncture in our history when hatred of a president counts as rational, reasoned opposition – no matter how irrational, unreasonable and improper it is. Democrats claim they are only interested in defending and upholding the Constitution. What a joke; when Obama was in office, his serial offenses against the Constitution were not only cheered by his party, they encouraged him to go around it as often as possible to ‘get their way’ on key political issues (and here, and here, and here).
Democrats’ goal in dealing with Trump is singular: To dispose of him, period, and if that means making the country ungovernable and chaotic, they’ll do it.
And the disgusting fake news establishment media will be there the whole way, providing the platform and vehicle for sowing the unrest.
Millions of Americans are going to buy into whatever BS the Democrats shovel at Trump because they, too, harbor an irrational hatred for him. But Comey’s testimony has made one thing crystal clear: It’s time for Democrats to either show their hand against the president, or shut the hell up and let the man govern.
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