New York Times blisters the rich asshole and his GOP enablers: ‘The president is not above the law’
President of the United States some rich asshole speaking at the 2018 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland. (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
In a Monday morning op-ed, The New York Times editorial board warned the president, saying he ” is not above the law.”
The board explained, “news reports point to a growing possibility that President [Donald] the rich asshole may act to cripple or shut down an investigation by the nation’s top law-enforcement agencies into his campaign and administration.”
The thought that the president can fire everyone involved and that the investigation will cease is absurd and impossible, the board alluded. It also noted that lawmakers should get ready for the moment to present itself.
“Lawmakers need to be preparing now for that possibility because if and when it comes to pass, they will suddenly find themselves on the edge of an abyss, with the Constitution in their hands,” it recommended.
“Make no mistake: If some rich asshole takes such drastic action, he will be striking at the foundation of the American government, attempting to set a precedent that a president, alone among American citizens, is above the law,” the board continued. “What can seem now like a political sideshow will instantly become a constitutional crisis, and history will come calling.”
The editorial also noted, however, that the rich asshole “has been known to huff and puff, to bluff and bluster, and he may be doing no more than that now.”
However, he could also be be doing something far worse and outright illegal.
POLITICS
Pence National Security Aide Steps Down Two Days After Being Named To Job
Jon Lerner withdrew after a behind-the-scenes White House argument hit the headlines.
By Roberta Rampton
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A new national security aide to U.S. Vice President Mike Pence stepped down on Sunday, only two days after being officially named to the job, after a behind-the-scenes White House argument hit the headlines, a White House official said.
The appointment of Jon Lerner to Pence’s team was one of the more short-lived personnel moves in a White House known for turbulent staff turnover and infighting, and the first to envelope the vice president, who works hard to stay out of the drama.
Pence’s office had announced on Friday that Jon Lerner, a senior aide to United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, would become Pence’s top adviser on foreign policy issues. By Sunday night, the vice president’s office had issued a second statement that Lerner had withdrawn.
The issue boiled over on Friday, when Pence and his senior staff were on an eight-hour flight to Peru to attend the Summit of the Americas.
President Donald Trump had been become upset, the White House official said, when he was told in error that Lerner was a so-called “Never Trumper” - a term that describes anti-Trump Republicans.
Lerner had backed Republican Senator Marco Rubio during the primary race to pick the party’s candidate ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
Pence phoned Trump and cleared up the tension, the official said. But the short-lived drama became public on Sunday in a report by Axios which said that Trump had initially told his chief of staff John Kelly to ax the appointment and questioned why Pence would have made the pick.
Lerner then offered to withdraw on Sunday night “to minimize the amount of conflict and internal drama,” the White House official said, and Pence decided it was the best option.
Lerner will continue working for Haley, the official said.
(Reporting by Roberta Rampton; Editing by Michael Perry)
By
-
April 16, 2018
Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin said striking teachers were to blame if children were harmed and then accused critics of 'misunderstanding' what he was really trying to say.
Kentucky’s far-right Republican governor, Matt Bevin, unleashed a despicable attack on striking teachers last week, but his so-called “apology” only makes it worse.
“I guarantee you somewhere in Kentucky today a child was sexually assaulted that was left at home because there was nobody there to watch them,” Bevin said Friday, blaming teachers on strike for any harm that befalls children during the strike.
The reaction to Bevin’s outrageous claims was swift and widespread, including from members of his own party.
So on Sunday, the governor released a video to try to mitigate the damage. But his supposed “apology” mostly blamed his critics for failing to understand his message about “the unintended consequences of schools being shut down” and said the condemnation of his comments was mostly a “misunderstanding” of what he was trying to say.
“For those of you who understood what I’m saying, thank you,” Bevin said. “I appreciate that you do. But clearly a tremendous number of people did not fully appreciate what it was that I was communicating or what it was that I was trying to say, and I hurt a lot of people. Many people have been confused or hurt or just misunderstand what it was that I was trying to communicate. That’s my responsibility.”
Bevin never apologized directly to the teachers he had so blatantly insulted. Instead, he offered his apology to “to those who have been hurt by the things that were said.”
Bevin’s remarks might have been more believable if he hadn’t been attacking teachers since the beginning of their strike.
But before he claimed he was merely concerned about the children, he was lashing out at the teachers the Kentucky Education Association representing them.
“They’re phonies,” he said in an interview last Tuesday. “They’re not even sincere.”
Bevin’s escalation of his attacks on teachers Friday was a continuation of his ugly rhetoric that had nothing to do with kids. His belated apology Sunday night was a clear attempt to stop the condemnation coming from even members of his own party.
Republican state Sen. Whitney Westerfield, said he was “troubled, frustrated and disappointed by the Governor’s comments last night about teachers.”
The governor “needlessly and unjustly demoniz[ed]” teachers, Westerfield added, who “peacefully” engaged with legislators in the state capitol.
Bevin’s problem isn’t that the people of his state misunderstood his message. It’s that they understood all too well.
James Comey deserves blame for FBI bombshell about Hillary’s emails — but this GOP lawmaker leaked it first
Congressman Jason Chaffetz of Utah (Don LaVange/Flickr)
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
James Comey is publicly reckoning with his decision to reveal the FBI “re-opening” the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s missing emails days before the election — but one key figure in that episode has largely escaped blame.
Comey, who was then FBI director, notified Congress on Oct. 28, 2016, that investigators were examining new emails discovered as part of an ongoing probe of Clinton’s private emails — and one congressman leaked the news.
Then-Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) forced Comey to comment on the new investigation — which ultimately turned up no evidence of wrongdoing — and inaccurately framed the news by tweeting about a letter the FBI director sent to lawmakers.
“FBI Dir just informed me, ‘The FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation.’ Case reopened,” Chaffetz tweeted.
Minutes later, House Speaker Paul Ryan repeated Chaffetz’s false claim that the case — which had never been closed — had been reopened, and other GOP lawmakers did the same thing on their own Twitter accounts.
some rich asshole crowed about the development at a campaign rally in New Hampshire, and a number of news organizations used the same framing in headlines about the newly discovered emails.
Comey told ABC News last week that he revealed the Clinton emails found on Anthony Weiner’s laptop because he feared the discovery would be leaked to the media through the FBI’s New York office.
“The team that had done the investigation was in the counterintelligence division at headquarters, of the emails,” Comey said. “And there were no leaks at all, very tight. But the criminal folks in New York were now involved in a major way—and I don’t want to single anybody out ’cause I don’t know where it was coming from, but there’d been enough up there that I thought there was a pretty reasonable likelihood that it would leak.”
Comey notified Congress about the emails before FBI agents could examine their contents, and lawmakers — starting with Chaffetz — quickly politicized the development just 11 days before the presidential election.
Chaffetz, who was chairman at the time of the House Oversight Committee, had previously vowed to spend years investigating Clinton if she was elected.
The Utah Republican declined to conduct similar oversight on the rich asshole administration, and announced April 22, 2017, that he would resign in June.
Chaffetz is now a paid contributor for Fox News.
Five takeaways from the Comey interview
BY NIALL STANAGE - 04/16/18 01:00 AM EDT
Former FBI Director James Comey’s much-hyped interview with George Stephanopoulos aired on ABC’s “20/20” Sunday night, with huge ratings guaranteed.
What were the main takeaways?
It’s on — Comey hit Trump full-force
Comey threw big punches from start to finish, beginning with some derisive comments about the President Trump's appearance and concluding with his belief that Trump is “morally unfit” to sit in the Oval Office.
There was also a shrugging dismissal of Trump’s denial that he told Comey that he hoped the then-FBI director could let the investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn go.
When Stephanopoulos noted that the president had denied saying such a thing, Comey replied with evident disdain: “Yeah, well, what am I going to do? He did."
The president and the former FBI director are now in a state of virtual war.
Trump has assailed Comey on Twitter in recent days as “a weak and untruthful slimeball,” “slippery” and “the WORST FBI Director in history."
There will be no cessation of hostilities anytime soon.
Did he go too far?
Given how Comey holds himself out as a paragon of ethical leadership — his book is titled “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership” — it seemed incongruous to hear him mock Trump’s hairstyle and facial coloring.
Comey repeated the detail, included in the book, that he assumes Trump has small white circles beneath his eyes because of the use of tanning goggles. Of the famous Trump hairstyle, he told Stephanopoulos that “it looks to be all his” and added wryly that "it must take a heck of a lot of time in the morning.”
On a human level, it’s easy enough to see why Comey would bear enmity toward Trump (and vice versa). And the president is, of course, famous for the aggressiveness of his personal jabs.
Still, Comey’s overall approach is discordant with former first lady Michelle Obama’s famous maxim: “When they go low, we go high.”
Comey’s assertion that it is “possible” that Trump is compromised by Russia will also likely draw some hot comments in the next 24 hours.
He provided no specific evidence to back up that claim. Critics will contend that a former FBI director should not make such an incendiary charge without providing his basis for doing so.
Fresh ammunition for both sides
Those who like Comey and those who loathe him will both find enough in the ABC interview to reinforce their positions.
The former FBI director offered plausible, detailed recollections of his meetings with Trump — and appeared to say nothing substantively inconsistent with previous accounts.
He also has at least some capacity for self-criticism, acknowledging the validity of other points of view and the fact that he has struggled with his ego for much of his life.
For those less favorably disposed toward him — on the left as well as the right — it’s easy to see how Comey’s earnestness can seem sanctimonious.
It’s also noticeable that, for all the times Comey is willing to publicly agonize over whether he did the right thing, he almost always concludes that he did.
No big regrets
Comey was forthright about how he felt in the closing stretch of the 2016 election campaign, after he made his bombshell announcement that the FBI had renewed its investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's emails.
“It sucked,” he told Stephanopoulos, adding that he “walked around vaguely sick to my stomach, feeling beaten down.”
But he continues to defend his conduct in that regard, as he does his earlier public announcement that he had found nothing that would make a prosecutable case against Clinton. He also stands by his actions in relation to Trump.
In the full transcript of the interview, which includes many details that were not broadcast, he contends, “The honest answer is I screwed up a couple of things.” But overall, he adds, “these were the decisions that were best calculated to preserve the values of the institutions. It was terrible for me, terrible. But I still think it was the right thing to do.”
A shadow campaign is underway
The White House clearly sees the threat Comey poses. He has already proven himself to be perhaps Trump’s most tenacious and dangerous adversary.
The pushback against him has come not only from the president’s Twitter feed, but from the podium of the White House briefing room, where press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called Comey “a disgraced partisan hack” on Friday.
Media commentators on both sides have also joined the fight with glee.
The situation was ramped up further on Sunday night.
Just before the broadcast ended, the Republican National Committee emailed reporters with a rebuttal of some of Comey’s points — a tactic more characteristic of debate nights than TV interviews during a president’s second year in office.
One other curious quirk came when viewers, at least in the Washington market, got to see a TV ad defending special counsel Robert Mueller in one of the commercial breaks. The ad was paid for by a group called Republicans for the Rule of Law.
If it wasn’t clear before, it is now: We are right in the middle of a quasi-election campaign.
Instead of conventional candidates, it is Comey, Mueller — and Trump himself — whose fates hang in the balance.
POLITICS
James Comey Gives A ‘Strange Answer’ When Asked If Donald Trump Should Be Impeached
The former FBI director also wants Robert Mueller’s investigation to continue.
Former FBI Director James Comey hopes President Donald Trump isn’t impeached.
“I’ll give you a strange answer,” Comey said when George Stephanopoulos asked about the issue in an interview that aired on Sunday night. “I hope not because I think impeaching and removing Donald Trump from office would let the American people off the hook and have something happen indirectly that I believe they’re duty bound to do directly.”
Comey then urged Americans to “stand up and go to the voting booth and vote their values.”
He added:
“We’ll fight about guns. We’ll fight about taxes. We’ll fight about all those other things down the road. But you cannot have, as president of the United States, someone who does not reflect the values that I believe Republicans treasure and Democrats treasure and Independents treasure. That is the core of this country. That’s our foundation. And so impeachment, in a way, would short circuit that.”
Comey also said he wanted special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia to continue.
“...As a citizen, I think we owe it to each other to get off the couch and think about what unites us,” he said.
Rogue FBI agents may have forced Comey into bombshell email announcement 11 days before election: report
James Comey during his ABC News interview/Screenshot
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
Former FBI director James Comey’s much-anticipated interview aired on ABC tonight, which means a whole new round of debates about whether Comey tilted the election to Trump with his bombshell announcement that he was “re-opening” the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s missing emails 11 days before the election.
But what if there was no way for Comey to stop that particular bomb from going off?
Nate Silver, who has previously written that the Comey letter “probably cost Hillary the election,” discussed this idea on Twitter tonight.
In analyzing the Comey’s interview with George Stephanopoulos, the polling analytics expert seized on section about the details of the investigation into disgraced Rep. Anthony Weiner, estranged husband of Hillary’s closet aide, who was being investigated for sexting with a teenager.
Comey said that he feared “a pretty reasonable likelihood” that Clinton emails being discovered on Weiner’s computer would get to the press through the New York office.
“The team that had done the investigation was in the counterintelligence division at headquarters, of the emails,” Comey said. “And there were no leaks at all, very tight. But the criminal folks in New York were now involved in a major way—and I don’t want to single anybody out ’cause I don’t know where it was coming from, but there’d been enough up there that I thought there was a pretty reasonable likelihood that it would leak.”
It all comes down to an understanding of the nature of the office, Comey said: “Counterintelligence is different. They’re so used to operating in a classified environment. They’re much tighter. But once you start involving people whose tradition is criminal, and in New York which has a different culture, there is a reasonable likelihood it was going to get out anyway.”
Silver was not fully convinced, pointing out that Comey likely could have bought his team a weekend to look over the emails on Weiner’s computer before dropping such a bombshell just before the election.
“Comey claims he faced an impossible choice between ‘concealing’ and ‘speaking’ about the HRC emails found on Weiner’s laptop. But there was a 3rd choice: wait & investigate further. He only learned about the emails on Oct. 27—one day before he spoke about them on Oct. 28,” Silver tweeted. “I’m not saying he should have waited until after the election. But 10/28 was a Friday. So have everyone cancel their weekend plans and dive into the emails. Then make a go/no-go decision on Sunday night based on whether there’s anything new and proprietary there.”
His tweets are below and here is the full interview transcript.
Comey claims he faced an impossible choice between "concealing" and "speaking" about the HRC emails found on Weiner's laptop. But there was a 3rd choice: wait & investigate further. He only learned about the emails on Oct. 27—one day before he spoke about them on Oct. 28. pic.twitter.com/KkWcKcPrES
I'm not saying he should have waited until after the election. But 10/28 was a Friday. So have everyone cancel their weekend plans and dive into the emails. Then make a go/no-go decision on Sunday night based on whether there's anything new and proprietary there.
Comey claims he faced an impossible choice between "concealing" and "speaking" about the HRC emails found on Weiner's laptop. But there was a 3rd choice: wait & investigate further. He only learned about the emails on Oct. 27—one day before he spoke about them on Oct. 28. pic.twitter.com/KkWcKcPrES
Watch Kellyanne Conway admit Comey swung the election to Trump
By
-
Kellyanne Conway's alternative facts tripped over the real ones.
The White House smear campaign against former FBI Director James Comey blew up in Trump’s face Monday morning, as counselor Kellyanne Conway admitted that Comey swung the election in Trump’s favor.
During an interview with George Stephanopoulos on “Good Morning America,” Conway tried to revive the original cover story that Comey was fired for his harsh treatment of Hillary Clinton.
“Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, in a scathing memo on May 9th and others, other former attorneys general, had called for Mr. Comey to step aside because they felt like he can no longer hold up the values of the FBI,” Conway said.
“He admitted to you that he purposely leaked information to a friend so that it would get into the media and trigger a special counsel,” Conway said. “This guy swung an election. He thought the wrong person would win.”
The truth is that shortly after firing Comey, Trump admitted the Rosenstein memo was a pretext. He told NBC News’ Lester Holt that he intended to fire Comey “regardless of recommendation,” and that the Russia investigation was at the top of his mind when he fired Comey.
It was later revealed that Trump bragged to Russian officials — during a secret Oval Office meeting— that the firing had relieved the pressure from the Russia investigation. The Rosenstein memo was merely a cover story that blew up within hours of its birth.
On Monday, Trump himself contradicted Conway minutes after her interview by slamming Comey for not treating Clinton harshly enough.
But Conway is right about one thing: Comey’s announcement that he was reopening the fruitless investigation into Clinton’s emails — just days before the election — likely did play a decisive role in Trump’s win.
Despite the Russian disinformation campaign and criminal email hacks, and despite the media’s obsessive coverage of the meritless Clinton email investigation, and despite Comey’s unprecedented July press conference excoriating Clinton while exonerating her, Trump still managed only a narrow electoral college victory — while losing the popular vote by nearly 3 million ballots.
But polling analyst Nate Silver showed that Comey’s letter announcing the reopening of the email investigation contributed to Clinton losing her lead in the closing days of the campaign.
Trump is famously thin-skinned, especially about his popular loss to Clinton, so Conway’s admission might not go over well in the Oval Office. But it demonstrates that neither Conway nor Trump can escape the truth forever.
Comey pulls no punches with Trump
BY JORDAN FABIAN - 04/16/18 12:00 AM EDT
Former FBI Director James Comey declared President Trump is “morally unfit” to lead the nation, telling a nationwide television audience it is “possible” the Russians have compromised the president and that there is “evidence” he may have obstructed justice.
Comey pulled no punches in an interview with ABC News that aired Sunday, describing Trump as a habitual liar who runs his administration like a mafia family.
“Our president must embody respect and adhere to the values that are at the core of this country, the most important being truth. This president is not able to do that. He is morally unfit to be president,” Comey told ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos during their five-hour discussion.
But Comey said he does not support impeaching the president over his conduct, saying voters should decide whether Trump continues to serve as president.
“Impeaching and removing Donald Trump from office would let the American people off the hook and have something happen indirectly that I believe they're duty bound to do directly,” the former FBI director said. “People in this country need to stand up and go to the voting booth and vote their values.”
Comey sat for his first television interview since being fired as part of a media tour to sell his new tell-all memoir, “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership,” which hits bookshelves this week.
While Comey’s comments largely mirror the contents of his book, as well as previous congressional testimony, they have renewed his personal feud with Trump at a pivotal time in the Russia investigation, when special counsel Robert Mueller appears to be closing in on Trump's inner circle.
The president blasted “Slippery James Comey” in a series of tweets ahead of the interview, calling him “the WORST FBI Director in history, by far!”
He also disputed Comey’s claim that he asked the FBI director for personal loyalty during a private meeting early in his presidency, a conversation Comey described in detail during the interview.
If the interview revealed anything, it was the depth of Comey’s personal dislike for Trump, who fired him as FBI director in May 2017.
The president first cited his handling of the probe into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of State, but later admitted that the Russia probe was on his mind when he decided to give Comey the ax.
Comey tore into Trump for voicing a “moral equivalence” in response to last year’s racially charged violence in Charlottesville, Va., and described the president as someone “who talks about and treats women like they're pieces of meat.”
He also brought up an alleged incident in which Trump watched prostitutes pee on a hotel bed in Moscow in 2013, reports of which were contained in an unsubstantiated dossier about Trump compiled by his political opponents.
Comey said Trump told him that “he may want me to investigate it to prove that it didn't happen. And then he says something that distracted me: ‘If there's even a 1 percent chance my wife thinks that's true, that's terrible.’”
The former FBI director refused to rule out the “stunning” possibility that Russia has material that could be used to blackmail the president.
“I think it's possible. I don't know. These are more words I never thought I'd utter about a president of the United States, but it's possible,” he said.
Stephanopoulos asked Comey whether he believes the president was trying to obstruct justice when he asked if Comey could “let it go,” referring to an FBI investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
“Possibly. I mean, it's certainly some evidence of obstruction of justice,” Comey said. “It would depend — and I'm just a witness in this case, not the investigator or prosecutor — it would depend upon other things that reflected on his intent.”
Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators about his conversations with Russia’s U.S. ambassador during the presidential transition period.
Mueller, who was appointed to lead the Russia probe after Comey’s firing, secured the plea. Flynn is now cooperating with the investigation.
James Comey’s ABC interview: Here are the top 7 unexpected revelations
James Comey during his ABC interview/Screenshot
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
Former FBI director James Comey sat down with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos tonight to promote his new book, A Higher Loyalty.
A lot of the interesting details were already known—Comey discussed the fact that Trump is “slightly orange up close” and grapples with his role in electing Trump by miscalculating the way his announcement of an investigation into Hillary’s emails—but the awkwardness that followed Trump’s election.
But there were some interesting
1. When they first met, Trump didn’t ask him any questions about Russian actions after it was clear that they had interfered in the election.
Trump wanted Comey to assure him that the election was fair. Once Comey said he thought that he himself had not put his thumb on the scale, they wanted to write a press release.
“Then the conversation, to my surprise, moved into a PR conversation… No one, to my recollection, asked, ‘So what’s coming next from the Russians? How might we stop it?'”
Watch that part of the ABC interview below:
2. Comey camouflaged himself with a curtain to hide in a failed attempt to hide from Trump.
“I’m 6’8″. And then I— I look and right next to me is this blue curtain. And I’m wearing a blue suit the doesn’t match perfectly, but close enough. So I’m thinking, ‘How great is that? I got a little camouflage.’ And so I start moving over and I pressed myself against the blue curtain, true story.”
3. Comey didn’t vote but his family were all Hillary supporters who attended the Women’s March.
“I didn’t take a poll among all the kids, but I’m pretty sure that at least my four daughters, probably all five of my kids, wanted Hillary Clinton to be the first woman president. I know my amazing spouse did… My wife and girls marched in the women’s march the day after President Trump’s inauguration. There was a lot of passion in this house for Hillary Clinton.”
4. Comey was never going to write a book.
…or so he says. Comey says he works hard to keep his ego in check and implied that his oldest friends would laugh at the suggestion that he didn’t want to write one.
“I was never going to write a book. It always felt like an exercise in ego. And one of the things I’ve struggled with my whole life… That battle with ego and my sense that memoirs are an exercise in ego convinced me I was never going to write a book. And I’m sure friends of mine from college and law school are out there laughing right now, saying, ‘Ah-ha, he wrote a book.'”
James Comey and George Stephanopoulos on ABC/SCreenshots
5. Comey doesn’t follow Trump on Twitter.
This came in response to a question about the presidential tweetstorm that was sure to follow the interview. “I don’t follow him on Twitter, but I’m sure it’s going to come,” Comey said.
6. The FBI considered Christopher Steele to be a reliable intelligence source.
This one wasn’t so much unexpected as reassuring—Steele’s revelations were so wild, and he’s been attacked so much that it meant something to hear Comey stick up for him.
“Well, certainly the source was credible,” he said when asked about the pee tape dossier. “There’s no doubt that he had a network of sources and sub-sources in a position to report on these kinds of things. But we tend to approach these things with a bit of a blank slate, trying to figure out, “So what can we replicate?” This guy, who’s credible, says these things are true. Okay. That means we should try and replicate that work to see if we can develop the same sources.”
Watch Comey discuss whether the Russians have something on Trump below:
7. Comey slept with a knife by his bed for years.
He was drawn to law enforcement after an armed burglar broke into his house when he was a boy and threatened Comey and his younger brother.
“I’ve always, since then, had some weapon at hand nearby,” Comey said.
POLITICS
WSJ Reports Michael Cohen Killed Story About An Alleged Trump Jr. Affair
The relationship reportedly started after a meeting with a pop star who was part of “Celebrity Apprentice.”
President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, killed a story Us Weekly was preparing in 2013 about an affair Donald Trump Jr. allegedly had with a “Celebrity Apprentice” contestant, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Cohen managed to stop a story in Us Weekly that would have detailed a relationship Trump Jr. allegedly had with dumblonde singer Aubrey O’Day between 2011 and 2012, the Journal reported, citing unnamed sources. The newspaper did not say how Cohen managed to quash the piece.
American Media Inc., which also owns The National Enquirer, purchased Us Weekly in 2017 from Wenner Media. The Enquirer has been accused of paying $150,000 to buy all the rights from former Playboy model Karen McDougal about an alleged affair with Trump that the tabloid never planned to publish.
Page Six was the first to report last month on the relationship that allegedly occurred while Trump Jr. was working as an “adviser” on his father’s reality TV show. Us Weekly, for the first time last month, also reported about the relationship that it said began after the two met on the “Celebrity Apprentice” set in 2011.
Vanessa Trump last month filed for an uncontested divorce from Trump Jr. in Manhattan Supreme Court.
“After 12 years of marriage, we have decided to go our separate ways,” said a statement by the couple, according to CNN. “We will always have tremendous respect for each other and our families. We have five beautiful children together, and they remain our top priority.”
When Vanessa Trump was pregnant in 2007, her husband complained in a radio interview about what “hell” it was to be visiting the Playboy Mansion with a pregnant wife. “It doesn’t get worse than that, does it?” he asked.
The information about Us Weekly was part of a larger piece in the Journal. The paper tracked Cohen’s hush-money payments to both Stormy Daniels, the adult entertainment actress who has claimed she had an affair with Trump, and to the Playboy Playmate who had a relationship with Elliott Broidy, a major GOP donor and venture capitalist.
Broidy issued a statement last week confirming that Cohen had arranged a payment of $1.6 million to the Playboy model after Broidy learned she was pregnant. She subsequently decided to have an abortion, said Broidy, who stepped down as the Republican National Committee’s deputy finance chairman after the news broke.
The payment to Daniels came from Delaware company Essential Consultants LLC, sources told the Journal. Broidy paid Cohen’s $250,000 fee for arranging the $1.6 million to the Playboy Playmate to the same company, the newspaper reported.
Cohen’s office was raided last week by the FBI as part of a criminal probe.
This story has been updated to include additional details about the ownership of Us Weekly.
Federal criminal probe hasn’t cost Michael Cohen his leadership position with the Republican Party
"I believe in due process," said RNC chair Ronna McDaniel.
During a CNN interview on Monday, Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel confirmed that Michael Cohen is still an RNC deputy director, and defended him.
“Michael Cohen has not been charged with anything, he’s under investigation,” McDaniel said of Cohen, the rich asshole’s longtime personal attorney who was the target of an FBI raid last week and is currently under federal investigation. “I believe in due process, I’m sure you do too, so we’ll see what happens.”
McDaniel also dismissed concerns about three top RNC officials being simultaneously embroiled in scandal as a “distraction.” In addition to Cohen’s problems, last Friday the Wall Street Journal broke the news that RNC deputy finance chair Elliott Broidy paid $1.6 million to a Playboy Playmate in exchange for her silence about an affair — an agreement negotiated by Cohen. Reporting about the Broidy payment came less than three months after the Wall Street Journal broke news that the then-finance chair of the RNC, Steve Wynn, had engaged in serial sexual harassment and assault.
“This is just a distraction,” McDaniel said. “I think main street America is more focused on, ‘is my paycheck bigger? Am I going to have a job last week? How is my family doing?'”
While McDaniel now claims to have concerns about “due process,” she wasn’t worried about that when the sexual misconduct of Harvey Weinstein was a major news story last fall. At that time, McDaniel repeatedly called for the Democratic National Committee to return all of the money given to it by Weinstein, despite the fact he denied the (extremely credible) allegations.
During a CNN interview last October, McDaniel rejected a comparison between Weinstein’s behavior and President the rich asshole, noting that the rich asshole “didn’t have eight settlements.” Those comments haven’t aged well, as we’ve since learned that the rich asshole benefited during the 2016 campaign from at least two hush payments made to women who claim to have had consensual affairs with him.
While the RNC has refused to give back money donated to it by Wynn, it called on Democrats to return donation from former Sen. Al Franken (D-MN), who resigned amid a groping scandal. McDaniel has justified making that distinction by pointing out that while Wynn denied the allegations, Weinstein and Franken ultimately admitted to wrongdoing.
Kellyanne Conway’s response to Comey interview contradicts the rich asshole’s talking point
Sarcastic or not, the truth came out.
Following the James Comey interview that aired on ABC Sunday night, the White House sent senior counselor Kellyanne Conway out to do damage control Monday morning. But during an interview on Good Morning America, she contradicted the rich asshole’s official line by admitting that Comey swung the 2016 election in some rich asshole’s favor when he announced the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails a few days before the vote.
“This guy swung an election,” she told George Stephanopoulos. “He thought the wrong person would win. His people in his household wanted the other person to win. And now, at the end of your interview, George, he gave a free political commercial, telling people to go out and vote against the president and his interests.”
FULL INTERVIEW: "I spoke to the President before the interview..." Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway one-on-one with @GStephanopoulos: abcn.ws/2IX5eHD
Conway was referencing comments Comey made in the interview and in his new book that his decision to make that announcement in late October may have been swayed by his assumption that Clinton was on target to win the election. “I’m sure that it was a factor. I don’t remember spelling it out, but it had to have been,” he said in the interview. “That she’s going to be elected president, and if I hide this from the American people, she’ll be illegitimate the moment she’s elected, the moment this comes out.”
Following her appearance, Conway claimed on Twitter that she was being sarcastic and incredulous:
This misleading headline should include an eye roll and question mark. Point I made on 3 shows is that we are supposed to believe THIS guy swung an election? I don't think so. Kellyanne Conway slams Comey: 'This guy swung an election' - ABC News abcnews.go.com/Politics/kelly…
Last July, the Daily Beast reported that an internal memo in the rich asshole campaign admitted that the Comey announcement had impacted the election. But that’s not what campaign officials were told to say, which is that he had no impact on the election and that the rich asshole won because he was an amazing candidate. That’s what the rich asshole himself has said as well.
In his preemptive tweets Sunday morning, the rich asshole — responding to excerpts of the interview — actually suggested that Comey thought that announcing the investigation was reopening would somehow help Clinton win and endear him to her administration.
If the rich asshole, a famously avid viewer of television news, was watching Conway’s interview, he will not be pleased.
7 eye-opening comments about Russia from James Comey’s ABC News interview
Kompromat, Papadopoulos, and golden showers all came up during the five-hour interview.
It’s possible that Russian officials have collateral on President some rich asshole, former FBI Director James Comey said during an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos.
On Sunday night, ABC News aired a one-hour special featuring segments from a much longer interview with the former intelligence official, along with other vignettes and backstory setting the stage for Comey’s blockbuster book which is set to be released on Tuesday. The network also published a transcript of the full five-hour interview.
In it, Comey made some stunning statements about President the rich asshole’s relationship with Russia.
Possible ‘kompromat’ on the rich asshole
Comey acknowledged that it is possible that Russia has compromising information about the president.
“Do you think the Russians have something on some rich asshole?” asked Stephanopoulos.
“I think it’s possible,” Comey said. “I don’t know. These are more words I never thought I’d utter about a president of the United States, but it’s possible.”
“That’s stunning,” Stephanopoulos replied. “You can’t say for certain that the president of the United States is not compromised by the Russians?”
“It is stunning and I wish I wasn’t saying it, but it’s just– it’s the truth,” Comey said. “I cannot say that. It always struck me and still strikes me as unlikely, and I would have been able to say with high confidence about any other president I dealt with, but I can’t. It’s possible.”
Papadopoulos sparked the FBI’s the rich asshole investigation, not the Steele dossier
In an attempt to delegitimize the intelligence community’s ongoing Russia investigation, conservatives have asserted that the FBI only began its investigation into the rich asshole campaign because of the Steele dossier, a controversial memo based on investigative efforts funded first by Republican opponents of the rich asshole and then by Democrats. In fact, it was information first shared by indicted former campaign aide George Papadopoulos that alerted the FBI to possible connections between Russia and the rich asshole campaign.
“What impact did the Steele — the so-called Steele dossier have on the FBI investigation? Did that trigger the FBI investigation in any way?” asked Stephanopoulos.
Comey replied definitively: “No. No, in fact, as I said, the information that triggered it was the Papadopoulos information that came in late July. The FBI didn’t get any information that’s part of the so-called Steele dossier, as I understand it, until after that. And so the investigation was triggered entirely separately from the Steele dossier.”
This was what prompted the FBI to begin its investigation.
the rich asshole didn’t criticize Putin in private
Comey said that the rich asshole’s refusal to criticize Putin even in private “mystified” him:
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: And the refusal to criticize Vladimir Putin?JAMES COMEY: I don’t know what’s behind that. I mean, that’s– that mystified me even after President the rich asshole became president ’cause I discovered that he wouldn’t criticize him even in private, which– I can understand a president making a geopolitical decision that, “I ought not to criticize an adversary country’s leader for some reason publicly.” But I discovered President the rich asshole wouldn’t even do it privately, and I don’t know why that is.
Later, asked again about the rich asshole shying away from criticizing Putin, Comey said, “I’m struck by it and I’m struck by it both in public and in private.” He noted that there are diplomatic and strategic reasons to withhold criticism of a foreign leader in public, even when that leader attacks the United States.
“But you would think that in private — talking to the FBI director, whose job it is to thwart Russian attacks, you might acknowledge that this enemy of ours is an enemy of ours,” Comey concluded. “But I never saw. And so I don’t know the reason. I really don’t.”
President-elect the rich asshole did not ask about how to stop future Russian attacks
After explaining his first meeting with the rich asshole as president-elect, where the intelligence community briefed him and his incoming aides on the Russian efforts to attack American democratic institutions, Comey noted that he was struck by what the rich asshole, Vice President-elect Mike Pence, and other aides did not ask:
No one, to my recollection, asked, “So what– what’s coming next from the Russians?” You’re about to lead a country that has an adversary attacking it and I don’t remember any questions about, “So what are they going to do next, how might we stop it? What’s the future look like? Because we’ll be custodians of the security of this country.” There was none of that. It was all, “What can we say about what they did and how it affects the election that we just had.”
The Russian foreign minister meeting alone with the rich asshole in the Oval Office is ‘crazy’
The day after the rich asshole fired Comey, he met with the Russian foreign minister and the Russian ambassador alone in the Oval Office, and let slip sensitive Israeli intelligence while also calling Comey a “nut job.” Comey said he found it “crazy” that Americans were present.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: The day after you were fired– president is meeting in the Oval Office with the Russian foreign minister. Calls you a nut job. Says the pressure’s been relieved now, the pressure on him has been relieved. What did you think when you saw that?JAMES COMEY: Wow, was my reaction. First of all, what are the Russians doing in the Oval Office? One, as a counter intelligence person I’m thinking, “That’s crazy–” without any Americans being present, one. And, two, it– the pretense is melting away, the bit about, “You were fired because of how you handled the e-mail investigation,” is melting away. You were fired because of the Russia investigation. That’s the substance of what I heard those words as.
Comey cannot rule out the possibility that the rich asshole campaign conspired with the Russians
Asked if he thought “people tied to President the rich asshole colluded with the Russians,” Comey said, “I don’t know is the honest answer.” He said the FBI was investigating the matter when the rich asshole fired him. “Was anyone aiding the Russians, conspiring with the Russians? There’s no doubt there was smoke around that. Whether there’s fire, I — I didn’t stay long enough to know.”
some rich asshole is weirdly obsessed with the most salacious allegation in the dossier
Of all the revelations detailed in the Steele dossier, the one that raised the most eyebrows involved peeing prostitutes, a hotel room in Russia, and a video. Its mere inclusion in the leaked memo caused many to discredit the whole document, but according to Comey, the rich asshole himself was strangely fixated on it.
During one of his first encounters with the rich asshole, Comey briefed him about the memo.
“I started to tell him about the allegation was that he had been involved with prostitutes in a hotel in Moscow in 2013 during the visit for the Miss Universe pageant and that the Russians had– filmed the episode,” said Comey.
the rich asshole’s response was characteristically self-serving, asking Comey if he looked like someone who would “need hookers.” And, unprompted, the rich asshole later returned to the allegation of a so-called “golden shower,” suggesting the FBI set about to disprove it.
“He brings it up and says he may want me to investigate it to prove that it didn’t happen,” said Comey. “And then he says– something that distracted me. ‘Cause he said, you know, “If there’s even a 1 percent chance my wife thinks that’s true, that’s terrible.”
“And I– and I remember thinking, “How could your wife think there’s a 1 percent chance you were with prostitutes peeing on each other in Moscow?” I’m a flawed human being, but there is literally zero chance that my wife would think that was true. So what kind of marriage to what kind of man does your wife think there’s only a 99 percent chance you didn’t do that?”
the rich asshole fixer Michael Cohen’s ‘cigar buddy’ busted for racist tirade in 1998
Michael Cohen with his friend Jerry Rotonda (in red circle)/Screenshot
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
One of the buddies who President the rich asshole’s lawyer Michael Cohen was hanging out with on Friday afternoon was charged with harassing and threatening a black parking attendant, The Guardian reports.
Rotonda was in the back of the group that was seen outside the Loews Regency hotel on the upper East side of Manhattan on Friday afternoon, at the same time Cohen’s attorneys were in court trying to seal documents seized from him by the FBI.
In December 1998, Jerry Rotonda, who is now an executive at Deutsche Bank and who owns an apartment in the rich asshole World Tower, was charged with violating the civil rights of Shirlene Pierce.
Pierce, who is black, had placed a $20 ticket for an expired meter on Rotonda’s luxury car and he reacted by abusing her with racist statements and threatening to run her over.
“I hope I see you crossing the street so I can run your n—– ass over,” he said, according to press reports from the court case at the time.
He allegedly called her “a stupid n—–,” and said that he would “slap that stupid n—– grin off your face.”
Rotonda told Pierce not to come to his neighborhood, “where decent people live,” and instead to “Go back to Dorchester where monkey n—— live.”
A judge found that there was “sufficient basis” to find Rotonda guilty but then allowed the case to be continued for a year without a finding. He was supposed to pay her $5,000 and apologize in front of her co-workers.
Prosecutors appealed the lenient sentence and in the end, his lawyers were able to assure that he received no punishment at all.
the rich asshole’s Terror Over Being Investigated Boils Over – Latest Move Shows Just How Desperate He Is
the rich asshole is losing his marbles. He’s been stewing, simmering, and raging ever since the FBI raided the offices and home of his lawyer, Michael Cohen. The raid had to do with Cohen’s business affairs and his $130,000 payoff to porn star Stormy Daniels, among other things, and the rich asshole, Cohen, and various allies seem to be terrified that the seized materials will reveal something incriminating. the rich asshole has even been screaming his fool head off about attorney-client privilege in a sorry attempt to convince the world that the raid was illegal.
Cohen is under criminal investigation (though the DOJ has yet to give specifics on that). Attorney-client privilege applies to legal advice, but don’t tell the rich asshole and his team that. They’ve sent a letter to Judge Kimba Wood, a U.S. District Court judge for the Southern District of New York, asking her to stop the DOJ’s review of Cohen’s materials and give the rich asshole and his team the right to determine what is and is not privileged information.
Seriously. He wants to tell the DOJ what they can and cannot see. What could possibly go wrong?
“The President objects to the government’s proposal to use a ‘taint team’ of prosecutors from the very Office that is investigating this matter to conduct the initial privilege review of documents seized from the President’s personal attorney, Michael D. Cohen.”
A taint team is a team of prosecutors who will go through Cohen’s material and ensure that anything that is truly privileged information is not used or made public. This team is separate and isolated from the agents who are conducting the overall investigation. the rich asshole’s desperate plea to the court shows that he and his team don’t seem to understand how attorney-client privilege works, let alone what a taint team does:
“Various documents that, to a taint team, may appear on their face to be non-privileged may in fact be covered by the attorney-client privilege.”
Do they really think prosecutors on a taint team are simply going to skim documents and determine privilege just on their face? Holy hell. The rest of that paragraph is an explanation and definition of privilege, as if the courts and the DOJ don’t understand this. the rich asshole’s lawyers are seriously among the most incompetent lawyers on the planet.
Furthermore, shortly after the raid, Reuters explained exactly how attorney-client privilege works:
[T]he privilege only covers communications relating to legal advice, said Lisa Kern Griffin, a former federal prosecutor and a professor at Duke University School of Law. It does not protect a person’s discussion of business, personal, or financial matters with a lawyer if they are unrelated to a legal representation.Crucially, attorney-client privilege also does not apply to communications by a lawyer in furtherance of a crime or fraud.
And should the rich asshole be allowed to determine what is privileged and what isn’t, it’s really difficult to believe that he won’t simply tell the DOJ that everything relating to him is privileged and therefore, they can’t see it at all.
Regarding the raid itself, the letter says, in part:
“It simply cannot be the case that by acting in such an aggressive, intrusive, and unorthodox manner, the government has somehow created an entitlement on its own part to eliminate the President’s right to a full assertion of every privilege argument available to him. Indeed, if the Court were to endorse the use of a taint team under these circumstances, raids of law offices would likely become more commonplace, as they would permit the government to wrest from the privilege-holder the ability, in the first instance, to assert privilege over documents and rightfully withhold them.”
It’s true that searching an attorney’s office is uncommon. It’s actually harder to get a search warrant for an attorney’s office because of privilege, according to the Reuters story:
The U.S. Department of Justice has a policy of only raiding law offices if less intrusive approaches, like issuing a request for documents known as a subpoena, could compromise the investigation or result in the destruction of evidence.Under department policy, the raid of Cohen’s offices required multiple levels of authorization by high-level officials.
“It is very unusual to take such an action,” said Griffin. “It suggests there is deep criminality at issue and real concern that just asking for the documents won’t be enough to ensure they are turned over.”
Gee, why on earth would they have trouble obtaining what they need from Cohen through less intrusive means? What the rich asshole really wants to do here is prevent that team from seeing anything that might incriminate him. That’s pretty much a given. Whether the court will grant him what he wants is up for debate right now, but make no mistake: He’s more scared of the investigation into Cohen than Mueller’s Russia probe at the moment. He’s terrified of what they might find. We can’t imagine why.
You can read the letter in full here.
Featured image via Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons
Former FBI Director James Comey says some rich asshole is “morally unfit to be president”
In a televised interview, Comey called the President of the United States a serial liar.
On Sunday night, ABC News aired a highly anticipated interview with former FBI Director James Comey, detailing his experience in the rich asshole Administration and his interactions with some rich asshole himself — before and during his presidency.
Comey, who led the FBI’s still-ongoing investigation into Russian interference during the 2016 election, declined to take a definitive stance on many subjects when pressed by host George Stephanopoulos, save for one: When asked whether he believed the rich asshole was a liar, Comey didn’t skip a beat. “Yes.”
Throughout the full five-hour interview — the transcript of which ABC News published to run alongside a condensed version for air — Comey returned to his assertion that the rich asshole is untethered to reality.
Comey cited two examples from the first hours of the rich asshole presidency, one in which the rich asshole lied about whether or not former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus was aware of a meeting, the other being the rich asshole’s preposterous insistence that his inauguration crowd was larger than President Barack Obama’s.
“That’s just not true. That’s not a perspective, that’s not a view, that’s just a lie,” said Comey. “And yet he would say it and, “Everyone agrees, everyone says, everyone believes…’.”
“There’s something more important than that should unite all of us, and that is our president must embody respect and adhere to the values that are at the core of this country. The most important being truth,” he added. “This president is not able to do that. He is morally unfit to be president.”
Comey was also forceful in his condemnation of the rich asshole’s treatment of women and his embrace of white supremacists in the aftermath of last summer’s neo-Nazi rally in Virginia.
“A person who sees moral equivalence in Charlottesville, who talks about and treats women like they’re pieces of meat, who lies constantly about matters big and small and insists the American people believe it, that person’s not fit to be president of the United States, on moral grounds,” Comey said.
POLITICS
In Searing Interview, James Comey Unleashes Against ‘Morally Unfit’ Trump
“I don’t think he’s medically unfit to be president. I think he’s morally unfit to be president.”
Former FBI Director James Comey gave a no-holds-barred interview on Sunday night in which he called Donald Trump “morally unfit to be president” and a liar who possibly obstructed justice.
Comey, speaking to ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, touched on many of the scandals that have plagued the Trump administration over the past 16 months, including the Russia dossier and the litany of sexual misconduct allegations leveled at the president.
“A person who sees moral equivalence in Charlottesville, who talks about and treats women like they’re pieces of meat, who lies constantly about matters big and small and insists the American people believe it, that person’s not fit to be president of the United States, on moral grounds,” Comey said.
Highlights from the interview include:
- Trump may be vulnerable to Russian blackmail. “I think it’s possible. I don’t know. These are more words I never thought I’d utter about a president of the United States, but it’s possible.”
- The president “treats women like they’re pieces of meat.”
- In regards to Trump asking Comey to drop his investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn, there was “certainly some evidence of obstruction of justice.”
- Comey said Trump was “of above average intelligence who’s tracking conversations and knows what’s going on.”
- “I don’t think he’s medically unfit to be president. I think he’s morally unfit to be president.”
- He said Trump “will stain everyone around him. And the question is, how much stain is too much stain...”
- Trump was obsessed with disproving allegations that he paid prostitutes to urinate on a bed in a Moscow hotel room. Comey recalled the president asking “Do I look like a guy who needs hookers?”
The interview comes just days before the release of his highly anticipated book, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership, which has already sold close to 200,000 copies.
As the interview continued, Comey appeared to have no fondness for the man who fired him last May.
“The challenge of this president is that he will stain everyone around him,” he told Stephanopoulos. “And the question is, how much stain is too much stain and how much stain eventually makes you unable to accomplish your goal of protecting the country and serving the country?”
The former FBI director said, however, he’d still be working for the government had he not been removed. “I was dreading it,” Comey said, noting he’d be “an unhappy F.B.I. director, but in a way proud of the organization and in my role in trying to protect it.”
Comey also recounted his conversation with Trump in which he said the president asked him to drop an investigation into then-national security adviser Michael Flynn. Trump has denied doing so and threatened to release “tapes” of the conversation to prove so.
Comey reiterated that he hoped such tapes existed and said the secretive nature of the meeting might imply Trump knew he was flouting convention. “If he didn’t know he was doing something improper, why did he kick out the attorney general and the vice president of the United States and the leaders of the intelligence community? I mean, why am I alone?”
“I’d be a crazy person to make it up,” he continued.
Stephanopoulos also asked if Comey believed the president obstructed justice, to which he replied: “Possibly.”
“I mean, it’s certainly some evidence of obstruction of justice. It would depend and ― and I’m just a witness in this case, not the investigator or prosecutor ― it would depend upon other things that reflected on his intent.”
Among the more salacious topics during the interview focused on the infamous Steele dossier that was compiled by a former British spy and alleged that footage exists of Trump watching prostitutes urinating in a Moscow hotel suite. Comey informed Trump about the allegations in private before his inauguration several times, and he writes in his book that Trump was obsessed with disproving them.
On Sunday, he said he was unsure if the rumors were true, but said they left the president open to blackmail by the Russian government.
“I honestly never thought these words would come out of my mouth, but I don’t know whether the ― the ― current president of the United States was with prostitutes peeing on each other in Moscow in 2013,” Comey said. “It’s possible, but I don’t know.”
Stephanopoulos also asked if he thought Russia had “something” on the president.
“I think it’s possible,” he said. “I don’t know. These are more words I never thought I’d utter about a president of the United States, but it’s possible.”
The interview prompted immediate reactions from Republican leadership.
“James Comey’s publicity tour reaffirms that his true higher loyalty is to himself,” Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee, said in a statement. “The only thing worse than Comey’s history of misconduct is his willingness to say anything to sell books. He has no credibility and President Trump was right to follow through on the bipartisan calls for him to be fired.”
As the reviews on Comey’s tell-all began to pour in, Trump immediately fired back on Twitter, calling the man an “untruthful slimeball” and intimating that he should be jailed for his actions at the helm of the FBI. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders later said Comey would “be forever known as a disgraced partisan hack that broke his sacred trust with the president of the United States.”
Trump unleashed another wave of fury on Twitter early Sunday, just hours before the ABC interview was set to air, accusing the former FBI chief of pushing “many lies” and predicting Comey would go down as the “WORST FBI Director in history, by far!”
Comey responded to the tweets with a message of his own, saying his book was “about ethical leadership & draws on stories from my life & lessons I learned from others.”
He continued: “3 presidents are in my book: 2 help illustrate the values at the heart of ethical leadership; 1 serves as a counterpoint.”
“I hope folks read the whole thing and find it useful.”
Comey tells ABC: the rich asshole ‘morally unfit’ for office
James Comey and George Stephanopoulos on ABC/SCreenshots
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
some rich asshole is “morally unfit” to be president of the United States, former FBI director James Comey told ABC in an interview broadcast on Sunday.
“I don’t buy this stuff about him being mentally incompetent or early stages of dementia,” Comey said of the rich asshole, according to a transcript from ABC.
“I don’t think he’s medically unfit to be president. I think he’s morally unfit to be president,” he said.
“Our president must embody respect and adhere to the values that are at the core of this country. The most important being truth. This president is not able to do that,” he said.
the rich asshole fired Comey in May 2017, citing the FBI’s behavior in investigating Democrat Hillary Clinton and its probe into possible the rich asshole campaign collusion with Russia to tilt the 2016 presidential election.
Just 11 days before the election, Comey announced that the FBI would reopen an investigation into Clinton’s possible misuse of a private email server while she was secretary of state — a move she has said played a part in her loss to the rich asshole.
The president lashed out at Comey in a series of tweets earlier Sunday, saying that the email probe was handled “stupidly” and calling Comey a “slime ball.”
No comments:
Post a Comment