Comey is going to testify publicly in front of the House Intelligence Committee. The same Comey that twice violated all kinds of Justice Department guidelines, and tossed Clinton under the bus by talking about an ongoing investigation, will be given an opportunity to clear up several important matters.
Here’s how I think this will play out. The Republicans will be almost 100% talking about “leaks”. An early clue to how this hearing will go will be if Comey starts giving long detailed answers about the FBI’s efforts to prevent leaks and catch leakers. If he gives the Republicans lots of time and doesn’t try to quickly brush them off, we could know early on that the FBI has been captured by the GOP fascists.
Comey is in a real tough spot here and it’ll be interesting to see how he handles it. There should be 3 ongoing investigations of interest.
1) Russia’s interference with the elections.
2) Trump’s lie about Obama “wire tappppps”.
3) Leaks of information about investigations.
Actually, I don’t see how he can say anything but “no comment” to anything concerning these issues. If he even admits that there are leaks, isn’t that pretty much an admission that the FBI has or is gathering information about one or both of the other issues, which in turn implies that there were, are, or should be, investigations in these critical matters?
Since I have no confidence in Comey at all, I’m going with he just dodges all the important questions and we learn nothing from this hearing. I think this will really piss off Schiff and he’s going to start demanding subpoenas be issued so they can get some information, and Nunes will fight tooth and nail to wrap up the non investigation and then the sparks will fly.
I’m old enough to remember the Watergate investigations. We had Democrats in control of congress and those were real investigations. But the Republicans fought every step along the way to shut them down, and that was a time when Republicans were just right wingers and not openly fascist authoritarians.
So what do you think Comey will say?
PS A little live blogging:
Schiff has an excellent opening statement! He’s going right after the Russian connection to Trump. Laying out a wonderful timeline. Tying Russians to Republican convention.
…
Tying the DNC hacks to Russian agents. Going after Roger Stone connections to Wikileaks, going hard after him! Sessions next. He’s laying out the facts like a damn spy novel! Great job!
…
NSA director Rogers is being totally non political, didn’t say anything important.
…
Comey up now. He confirms there’s an ongoing investigation into Russian connection. That’s more than I thought he would say. He just made a very tough statement on leakers. That’s not good.
…
Nunes setting up a strawman about votes being changed.
…
Rep Rooney asking a lot of questions about NSA leaking, but in the process, I think he’s exposing Flynn’s possible illegal conversation with Russians. I don’t think he’s getting the results he wants. I think when the Dem’s get to question they’re going to jump on some of this.