The Patriot Post® · Comey's Comeuppance Is Long Overdue
The James Comey Book Tour continued last night on Fox News’ “Special Report with Bret Baier,” as the former FBI director took his toughest questions yet from Baier. We’ll note three key exchanges and make a more general observation about Comey.
First, Comey has an odd definition of the word “leak.” Speaking on “Fox & Friends” Thursday morning, President Donald Trump declared, “Comey is a leaker and he’s a liar. … He’s been leaking for years.” Comey responded Thursday night, “He’s just wrong. Facts really do matter.” Comey leaked a two-page memo recording his meetings with President Trump to his friend Dan Richman, a Columbia University Law School professor who Comey had previously hired as a former special employee of the FBI, with instructions to get the information to The New York Times. Comey’s stated intent in testimony to Congress was that he hoped to bring about a special prosecutor to investigate Trump. Yet to Bret Baier he insisted, “I don’t consider what I did with [Dan] Richman a leak. I told him about an unclassified conversation with the president.” He likened the memo to a “diary,” supposedly meaning it wasn’t a leak to reveal it.
Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) responded later, “Jim Comey has a definition of the word ‘leak’ that no one else has. What he says is a ‘leak’ is what the rest of us call a felony. Leaking is disclosing a confidential conversation, which is exactly what he did.”
Second, Comey denied knowing who funded the fake Russian dossier. “When did you learn that the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s campaign had funded Christopher Steele’s work?” Baier asked. “I still don’t know that for a fact,” Comey replied. Baier was incredulous. “What do you mean?” Comey stuck to his guns: “I’ve only seen it in the media. I never knew exactly which Democrats had funded it. I knew it was funded first by Republicans.” Wrong. It’s true that The Washington Free Beacon originally hired Glenn Simpson and Fusion GPS to research Trump, but it ended that relationship before Steele was even hired. “That [dossier] was initiated by Democrats,” Baier correctly noted.
Comey can’t admit the truth here because that phony dossier was the impetus for initially investigating Trump, including the bulk of the justification to the FISA court to conduct surveillance of his team. Comey’s denials here ring worse than hollow. Later in the interview, he even had the gall to insist “I don’t see the disparity” between how the Clinton and Trump cases were handled.
Third, Comey was asked about the anti-Trump texts between FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. Strzok interviewed both Hillary Clinton and Michael Flynn — he was integral to both cases. Comey said that, had he known about those texts at the time, he would have “removed both of them from any contact with significant investigations.” He also admitted their work product could be called into question, but he insisted the team was big enough to compensate.
In summary, Comey gave the interview to Fox for one reason and one reason only — to sell more books. His celebrity media blitz accounts for 600,000 sales in his first week. But more important, Comey has a terminal case of Potomac fever. He is so sure he made all the right decisions that he’s revising the history of two major investigations to justify those decisions. He is delusional about the extent of his own gross bias in favor of Clinton.