I wrote a diary last week about the puzzling and more than a little suggestive line of questioning Sheldon Whithouse engaged in with (soon to be former) Director Comey. I’d like to take a second look at the first part of that questioning in light of the events of the past two days:
WHITEHOUSE: Yes. With respect to oversight questions, let's hypothesize that an investigation exists and the public knows about it, which could happen for a great number of legitimate reasons. What questions are appropriate for senators to ask about that investigation in their oversight capacity?
COMEY: They can ask anything they want...
WHITEHOUSE: But what -- what questions are appropriate for you to answer?
COMEY: Very few while a matter is pending and...
WHITEHOUSE: While we know it's pending, is it appropriate for you to tell us whether it's adequately resourced and to ask questions about for instance, are there actually agents assigned to this or has this been put in somebody's bottom drawer?
COMEY: Sure, potentially, right...
WHITEHOUSE: And...
COMEY: ... how's it being supervised, who's working on it, that sort of thing.
WHITEHOUSE: And are there benchmarks in certain types of cases where departmental approvals are required or the involvement of certain department officials is required to see whether those steps have actually been taken?
COMEY: I'm not sure I'm following the question, I'm sorry.
WHITEHOUSE: Let's say you've got a hypothetically, a RICO investigation and it has to go through procedures within the department necessary to allow a RICO investigation proceed if none of those have ever been invoked or implicated that would send a signal that maybe not much effort has been dedicated to it.
Would that be a legitimate question to ask? Have these -- again, you'd have to know that it was a RICO investigation. But assuming that we knew that that was the case with those staging elements as an investigation moves forward and the internal department approvals be appropriate for us to ask about and you to answer about?
COMEY: Yes, that's a harder question. I'm not sure it would be appropriate to answer it because it would give away what we were looking at potentially.
WHITEHOUSE: Would it be appropriate to ask if -- whether any -- any witnesses have been interviewed or whether any documents have been obtained pursuant to the investigation?
COMEY: That's -- that's also a harder one. I'd be reluctant to answer questions like that because it's a slippery slope to giving away information about exactly what you're doing.
WHITEHOUSE: But if we're concerned that investigation gets put on the shelf and not taken seriously, the fact that no witnesses have been called and no documents have been sought would be pretty relevant and wouldn't reveal anything other than a lack of attention by the bureau, correct?
COMEY: It could, but we're very careful about revealing how we might use a grand jury, for example. And so, if we start answering...
WHITEHOUSE: Well, you've got 6E (ph), I understand that.
COMEY: Yes.
WHITEHOUSE: This is a separate thing.
COMEY: Yes, so that's a harder call.
WHITEHOUSE: Well, we'll pursue it.
At the time, I thought this was a shot across Director Comey’s bow — a warning to him that some in the senate thought he might be slow-walking things and that they weren’t going to let that slide. Now I have a whole new speculation based on what we learned yesterday about the run-up to Comey’s firing. So here goes:
I now think this line of questions (and possibly Whitehouse’s entire line of questions) was a cooperative effort between him and Comey. Consider that we now know that, far from slow-walking the investigation, Comey was in fact preparing to significantly expand it. And consider that Comey had to be aware that he could be fired at any time in an effort to quash that investigation. Seen in that light, this was Whitehouse and Comey getting the Director of the FBI, the guy running the Russia investigation, on the record saying “yes these are appropriate questions for you to ask and for whoever is in my position to answer.”
That is, this was putting a predicate on the record aimed at Comey’s replacement, were he to be replaced.
As I said, just speculation. But to me this makes that exchange suddenly make a lot more sense.