I’m watching a Storage Wars marathon (and basically anything else that can hold my interest) because I am so fucking sick and tired of this election, but I had a random thought. Let’s see if we’re being cynical enough about this whole Comey.
Given the disclosures today about Trump and the Russian server and the bombshell that the Russians were allegedly attempting to recruit Trump for five years, what if Comey found out a while back that this was happening, but wanted to hold it close to vest so as not to endanger the investigation. Then when they found out, they desperately wanted to inform the public, but were afraid if they came forward with this info, it would play into Trump’s spiel about rigged elections. Simultaneously, Comey knows he has a lot of rogue agents who are leaking crap about the Clintons at every time, and for obvious reasons, he wants to get rid of them.
The next best way to do this would be to first leak the nothing burger about emails neither wrote nor received, knowing full well it will be quickly refuted, then track who knows what and was involved and you could follow the leaks and find out who the disloyal and rogue agents are. Then, you could coordinate the planned leaks about Trump and the Russians for maximum damage, and no one can claim the election is rigged, because if it was ok for Clinton it is ok for Trump.
You then take out Trump, who you think is a real threat, identify the problems within the FBI, retain your nonpartisan stature, and you and Loretta get to go on a nice purge prior to HRC taking over in January.
Or I have read too many shitty spy novels and Comey is just an idiot.
bago
‘A idiot’ is the preferred nomenclature.
Baud
@bago: What?!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@bago: and a ass. ETA: Or, to update and contextualize as appropriate here, a asshole.
Amanda in the South Bay
I literally know nothing about Comey other than the Bush era stuff, which Marshall looks up to him for (probably a source for him?). Your guess is as good as anyone’s.
Iowa Old Lady
That seems a bit convoluted.
Baud
Yeah, right.
wag
Nice little theory ya got there. Be a shame if anything happened to it…
I actually think its as plausible as anything else to come out this evening.
Baud
@Iowa Old Lady: Have you been watching this election cycle? Cole’s idea isn’t even in the top 10.
Major Major Major Major
Everything Trump touches turns into trash. Ascertain the stupidest possible scenario that can be reconciled with the available facts.
Sourmash
A bit hard to follow with all the pronouns and intrigue, but I tend to think Comey’s an idiot.
MikeBoyScout
Don’t ever underestimate the stupidity of an old white guy in power
Iowa Old Lady
@Baud: There is that.
JPL
Comey is a partisan idiot. He proved that at the news conference. He was probably told that Trump will be impeached on day one and Mike Pence will be President. Pence is the conservative that they all want anyway.
randy khan
One of my colleagues today said that the kind of people who get reputations for being straight shooters in law enforcement tend to be second rate. That simple theory is beginning to grow on me.
Hunter Gathers
His own subordinates are skull fucking him, and he refuses to do a damn thing. He’s more worried about getting shit from his own party than doing his fucking job. Fucking coward.
Jeffro
Or, “Comey’s Razor” – go with the simplest explanation that squares with the facts and with Comey trying to appease the Rs he pissed off so mightily by doing his job and not finding anything to crucify HRC with this past summer.
Basically, the FBI Director is ignoring connections between one candidate & his campaign to a hostile foreign power’s intelligence service, while amplifying connections that may not even exist between the other candidate’s aide and her estranged husband that happened to happen via (wait for it) EMAIL.
So yeah, too many shitty spy novels, and Comey’s a weak little partisan idiot trying to make nice with the Repugs who’ve been beating him up for three months.
Villago Delenda Est
@bago: That is in the Wonkette non-comment stylebook, along with “moran”. And “dick joke”.
John, this is real life. No one thinks though the plot before they launch into this.
Baud
@JPL: I had this theory a while back.
raven
wrong thread
JPL
@Baud: Well then, I heard it here first.
Gin & Tonic
Is Comey paying you to post this crap? It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
Omnes Omnibus
Awfully Ludlum-esque.
Davebo
Colonel Mustard, in the Conservatory, with the Candlestick.
debit
My theory is that he’s an android. This is the Westworld thread, right?
Hoodie
Probable tinfoil hattery, but I was wondering along the same lines, i.e., was the Clinton letter to inoculate him for the later dump of information on Trump’s Russian connections? Hard for the GOP to complain if Hillary is also being trashed, even though a Russian connection is far more damaging than Huma’s work emails sharing a hard drive with Weiner’s dick pics. Interesting couple of things: (1) Obama has been noncommittal in criticizing Comey; and (2) some GOPers are attacking Comey – do they smell a ratfuck?
Hilfy
“Highway thru Hell” on the Weather Channel, weekends and various other times, is a great mind-cleanser. Big, burly clever men fighting blizzards with monster tow trucks in British Columbia to clear wrecks from highways. It is exotic.
amk
Don’t you have a house to repair or something?
KoWT
I’m gonna go ahead and call an Occam’s Razor violation, eh…
Sorry.
jl
@Major Major Major Major:
‘ Ascertain the stupidest possible scenario that can be reconciled with the available facts. ‘
Trump desperately needed cash, and the Russians had some. Great dealz appeared on the horizon.
The press styles itself as our go-to institution that is supposed to inform us of important issues like possible foreign influence in US elections. Or fascist organizations influencing a candidate.
The US corporate press is utterly corrupt and incompetent. Looks like most of them are unable to do anything but pass on gossip whispered to them GOP dirty trickster political operatives. And the ones that can do more, it is due by a very few real reporters who seem to be working at cross purposes with corrupt editorial rooms. If half of the stuff on Trump is true, the have another failure similar to magnitude of their malfeasance in the run-up to the Iraq invasion.
TPM blog has a piece up called
Russia’s Cold Decrepit Hand
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/russia-s-cold-decrepit-hand
US institutions are looking pretty cold and decrepit too. As in half dead, decaying, and no longer viable.
Applejinx
“and the bombshell that the Russians were allegedly attempting to recruit Trump for five years”
wait, what?
Okay, this is unfolding faster than even I can keep track of :D
So, Trump AND THE FBI are Russian moles. I can see why the Repubs, the Village, and fellow-travelers in the FBI are scared.
JPL
Oh goody, a new FBI/Justice leak from the NYTimes
link
Time for John to rethink his defense of Comey
Major Major Major Major
@Omnes Omnibus: man, I loved that guy.
jl
@amk:
‘ Don’t you have a house to repair or something? ‘
The human mind gets to wandering in odd directions during the endless sanding, scraping and refinishing.
maryQ
I had gazackly the same thought one hour ago, and discussed it with Mr. Q, as we drank a bottle of wine to celebrate our 18th anniversary.
We can wait a few days for the smoke to clear on all of this.
I am now thinking that our girl has this in the bag, and all of this Russia stuff will eventually make its way out, and the story will be about how Ryan and co enabled a treasonous a-hole.
Also thought today as the likes of Rove and Walsh tore Comey a new one about Friday’s non-revelation that no serious republican in DC is lifting a finger to help Trump, and they are secretly rooting for Hilary to, you know, keep the lights on and the roads and bridges intact and the army fed and clothed, and they are now deeply worried that Trump has a real chance and that they will then own this flaming bag of dog poo.
These people deserve to be in orange jumpsuits for perpetuity.
m0nty
So your theory, John, is that Comey decided that to avoid the appearance of being partisan, he would be deliberately partisan one way, and then deliberately partisan the other way, so that they would cancel each other out and everyone would call it a draw and give him a medal? Hmm. Your scenario ends up with the GOP wanting to string Comey up by his nutsack, so I see a flaw there.
The new question today is that Comey should have known all about the Truppet stuff beforehand, so why did he report the Clinton email nothingness when he knew that the Trump material would drop immediately afterwards, making him look like even more of a partisan hack for his hypocrisy? Always assume incompetence over conspiracy, so perhaps he didn’t know how far down the road that the investigative reporters were in chasing that story? Or maybe he just panicked when Chaffetz put pressure on. His best option through all of this was always not to put his head above the parapet before the election, so it’s still a mystery as to why he did it.
Olivia
Oh, look at you, John Cole; always looking for the silver lining.
dmsilev
@Omnes Omnibus: The Comey Conspiracy was not one of his stronger books.
Villago Delenda Est
@Major Major Major Major: Drumpf explained in song.
Omnes Omnibus
@dmsilev: His later books were definitely rather formulaic.
Villago Delenda Est
@maryQ: Chaffetz’ head would look much better on a pike outside the gate at King’s Landing than on his shoulders.
amk
sam wang.
that’s it.
Thoroughly Pizzled
The Spy Who Comey in from the Cold
quakerinabasement
If your suppositions are true, the plot is running behind schedule. Here in swing-state Colorado, 25percent of voters have already turned in their ballots.
amk
@Thoroughly Pizzled: The Partisan Mosaic
J.
Cole. John Cole.
Kay
Aaaaaand-now the FBI leaks information exonerating Trump:
They’re working 24/7 on electing Donald Trump for the next week, I guess, the FBI.
Hope there’s no crime-fighting to do while they’re busy campaigning.
dmsilev
@Omnes Omnibus: I did enjoy the two self-satirizing novels he wrote (The Road to Gandolfo, and The Road to, umm, somewhere else I forget right now).
Major Major Major Major
I will say that if you’d told me a year ago that our presidential election would be a proxy war with Russia, I would have thought you a very unserious person.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Baud knows better.
BillCinSD
@Amanda in the South Bay: well he led the prosecution of Jose Padilla, and was a special deputy on the Whitewater investigation, where he did basically the same thing as he did with the earlier HRC is innocent but I’m going to cast aspersions anyway press conference from July.
His Bush-era stuff wasn’t even that great. Yeah he stopped Gonzalez and Libby from pushing Asgcroftto sign off when Ashcroft was in the hospital, but Comey signed the letter himself to continue the program a couple of weeks later, after a couple of procedural tweaks. So he’s not exactly pure as the driven snow.
Ruckus
Or I have read too many shitty spy novels and Comey is just an idiot.
It’s possible that he’s figured this out and has a fine game plan. But if this is true his timing sucks hairy donkey balls, and where is the other shoe?
Therefore it seems more likely that you are reading too many shitty spy novels and your conclusion is spot on.
Omnes Omnibus
@dmsilev: The Road to Gandolfo was the first of his books that I read.
bluehill
Even after this, repubs will still put party first. Putin is obviously playing the long game and these dumba$$es may not wake up until the first shots are fired. I wonder what other repubs he has compromised or bought off. Cripple the government by refusing to do anything to address the country’s problems, erode the capabilities of key government institutions, foment unrest in the populace and once the US is too addled with its own problems continue to invade the former SSRs. On one hand seems the stuff of spy novels, but on the other hand Trump is the repub nominee. He better hope that Putin doesn’t decide one day that martyrdom would better accomplish his aims.
JGabriel
John Cole @ Top
Well… Comey is a Republican…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Then why did Comey not want the FBI to related to the Russian disruption story? which the evidence suggests is the case.
scary parallel in all the police unions’ endorsements of Trump.
Splitting Image
I don’t think this theory accounts for Comey’s actions, although it does accurately explain the TV-heads’ reaction to the story. The need for balance requires that a genuine Trump scandal must be balanced by a fake Democratic scandal, so documented co-ordination between Trump and Putin must be countered with another non-story about Clinton emails.
I don’t think Comey thinks that way though. As a white male Republican in a position of considerable importance, he is already inoculated against accusations of bias. It isn’t as though he is representing a Special Interest Group like Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.
Applejinx
This is the secret: oligarchs around the world stand hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round.
It’s not even about Trump: this is about what happened to Russia. About how Russia discovered capitalism, and reinvented oligarchy, and became that which they most loathed. They became Trump, and then making the connection with actual Trump was only a matter of time, greed, and way too much money.
There’s Trumps in Russia too, bet on it. There are oligarchs in the Village, and there’s moles in the FBI, and the rot runs deeper than you can imagine. Everyone’s on the make, or threatened and scrambling to get FUCKING WEALTHY as some form of self-protection, while watching shit get ridiculous around them. Like I said: these people start to consider being hunted by the Russian mob AND the FBI in tandem, and they go WTF and abandon all notion of whistleblowing.
We may never know the full story but what’s about to emerge will blow your mind.
And it’s all because oligarchs around the world are the same class, with more in common with each other than they could ever have with us. This is what they do.
PaulWartenberg2016
Never attribute to malice what can be best explained by idiocy.
Baud
@Kay: So will Comey do a press conference where he calls Trump reckless?
srv
John, are you so old you can’t see the 11-DIMENSIONAL game played here?
We have White House visitor logs showing the Alfa Bank executives visited there. Trump has been playing a rear guard action at the behest of Obama (really Citi Bank) to mess up the RINO party and then keep Hillary out of the White House.
Do you really believe he has forgiven her for 2008? You think just the Clintons have long memories? What more proof do you need that he appointed Comey as FBI Director with a term to end in 2023? It’s not just a major slap in the face to Hillary, the only thing worse he could have done to her “Third and Fourth Obama Terms” would have been to appoint Ken Starr to the Supreme Court. How obvious does he have to be?
The whole Birther thing was a cover to give Trump credibility. After 8 years of trying, Obama knows the only way to change America is with an outsider like Trump.
Schlemazel
We do not live in a LaCarrie or Clancy novel so I am going to say your idea is too elaborate for the real world.
Omnes Omnibus
@Applejinx: When was Russia not an oligarchy?
Major Major Major Major
@Applejinx: oooooh those rootless cosmopolitans make me so mad
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Comey should come out and give another management seminar press conference.
His subordinates cannot shut up. They make it worse every day. Now they’re not credible on anything.
Applejinx
@bluehill:
That’s definitely a concern. I wonder if, by the end of the week, it’s just going to become a bloodbath. The Russians will whack all of their puppets and run, leaving a country in chaos with a severe domestic terrorism problem. I wouldn’t be Trump right now for a hundred billion dollars. I think the chances are very high that he’s more valuable to them as a gory very public martyr. Whether or not it can be hung on the Democrats and Clinton won’t matter after a certain point. Once it’s clear he can’t win, it’s too valuable to the Russians to whack him and watch the Right go absolutely berserk.
amk
Kay
@Baud:
Comey should do a press conference where he calls Comey reckless.
They really can’t shut up for the time it takes to finish this stupid election? Is anyone running that place?
Applejinx
@Omnes Omnibus: I did say ‘reinvented’. Of course they were also an oligarchy under communism.
Baud
@amk: For a sec, I thought that was Ross from Friends, but then I remembered that was David Schwimmer.
Omnes Omnibus
@Applejinx: Okay.
Tokyokie
Hard to believe in the integrity of the FBI when one day the director trumpets a nothing burger about one candidate, and a few days later, leaks within the agency say they couldn’t find connections between Trump and Putin, when somebody doing a rudimentary analysis of Internet traffic is able to do so. Sounds like the place needs to be cleaned out fire hoses, high-pressure spray washers, and tanker cars of disinfectant.
SiubhanDuinne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Actually, I think it’s a asshat.
JPL
The conservative pundit Liz Mair is hinting at something the Trump’s Non Disclosure Agreements that could take him down. She said the Clinton campaign has the information, but she might release it, if they don’t. Someone posted about this earlier.
Anyway you don’t have to sleep in a Holiday Inn, to realize that it has to be a sex clause, whether assault or something else. That’s all we care about.
Sex Sales..
This link is for her twitter page
Baud
@Kay:
He’s starting to give off that Michael Scott vibe.
Gin & Tonic
@Applejinx: Decaf, dude.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I agree with most of this, but I don’t think this story is “too nuanced”, I think his last tweet is the way you communicate it.
sherparick
@Thoroughly Pizzled: Comey as George Smiley? Well that would certainly be interesting since no one played 12th dimensional chess better than Smiley. However, perhaps the “a idiot” theory may will have the same result since there definitely needs to be an IG investigation on all this leaking and blackmailing the investigator.
Something to remember is that Chaffetz is I believe a former FBI agent. If it wrong for a President to use his office to target his political enemies, it is an wrong for a Congressman. I hope the bashing of Chaffetz starts this moment and ends when he resigns from Congress in shame.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Omnes Omnibus: I know! I know! Never.
@Kay:
Totally. And that fucks things up as much as his insertion of Trumpaganda into the election, just in a slightly different way.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@srv: Lay off the bath salts.
Applejinx
@Tokyokie: Well, that’s why it’s obvious the FBI is loaded with Russian moles. It’s starkly, brazenly stupid, beyond what simple ignorance or incompetence could explain. The rest is simple: an operation like that is dangerous and not easy to handle if you’re a bunch of clownish Republicans thinking all you need to do is grift your way to retirement. At least as far as the FBI is concerned, I think they must be completely compromised. Wonder what the NSA make of all this. That’s a crowd who know what a DNS is.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@sherparick: somebody speculated that Evan McMullen might give Jacey a run for his money when he goes after Orrin Hatch’s seat. Not that EMM is a prize, necessarily, but I’d love to see Chaffetz get ankled out of a promotion I’m sure he thinks is his for the taking
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: Probably when it was an absolute monarchy.
Gin & Tonic
@sherparick: Chaffetz applied to the Secret Service but was turned down. He was never in law enforcement, but was rather a PR flack for some half-skeezy MLM company.
different-church-lady
@Kay:
How are those two things different?
max
Let’s see if we’re being cynical enough about this whole Comey.
Given the disclosures today about Trump and the Russian server
The problem is, is having read the story, there’s nothing there. Franklin Foer’s interesting article reminds me of nothing so much as the (credulous) acceptance of the Curveball tale. (If you don’t remember Curveball, try ‘Saddam Hussein tried to buy Nigerian uranium’.) I feel bad for the poor CS guys that had to talk to Foer. (‘But could Trump be secretly using an overtly labeled server (trump-email.com) to carry on a super sekrit conversation with his Russian controller who happens to be a really fat hairless guy in a wheelchair who has an all-white cat????’ ‘Well, the server log you have could indicate some kind of program trying to communicate with a Russian server, sure.’ ‘Well, THANKS! That’s what I needed to know! *CLICK*’)
but were afraid if they came forward with this info, it would play into Trump’s spiel about rigged elections.
‘Jason Chaffetz would get really really pissed.’
Then, you could coordinate the planned leaks about Trump and the Russians for maximum damage, and no one can claim the election is rigged, because if it was ok for Clinton it is ok for Trump.
Well, I was still wondering if the DNC hacking was actually a honeypot operation which would be amusing.
You then take out Trump, who you think is a real threat, identify the problems within the FBI, retain your nonpartisan stature, and you and Loretta get to go on a nice purge prior to HRC taking over in January.
Meh.
Or I have read too many shitty spy novels and Comey is just an idiot.
He appears to have decided to say something. He saw something, he said something. Like the crazy lady and the Syrian band aboard the airliner, this turns to be somewhat goofy.
max
[‘Go with the tax returns, dude.’]
hueyplong
Pretty much all of the Byzantine Ludlum Putin plot narratives have him motivated to whack Trump at some point, don’t they? Trump has proven, over and over again, that he can’t keep his mouth shut. The second Trump is no longer viable as a well-placed stooge, he’d need to be iced.
Johannes
C’mon he’s not George Fucking Smiley; he’s just smarter than fucking Gonzo.
(Oh, Sherparick got there first, but I need a therapeutic swear.)
Applejinx
@sherparick:
Oh, really? As in ‘the crowd who are acting like they’re totally compromised by Russian agents’, that FBI? What a simply amazing coincidence. Is he showing great interest in investigating the links between Trump and Russia, or is he doing everything possible to shut off that line of inquiry and blowing smoke elsewhere?
Omnes Omnibus
@?BillinGlendaleCA: The tsars still required a coterie of people to run things. They were selected from a pretty small group.
Credenzal Jocularity
@srv:
Dammit DougJ,
I actually had this drafted as 5 stars would buy again for super-snarky-fun-times and then you had to let srv’s mask slip. Without even having the decency to capitalize the S? For shame!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@different-church-lady: That was my question.
Major Major Major Major
@different-church-lady: third-party voters assure me that there is not a what-hurts-one-helps-the-other system in American politics!
Adam L Silverman
@sherparick: Chaffetz is not a former Federal Law Enforcement Officer, nor is he a Law Enforcement Officer at all. He is a formal political operative for a past governor of Utah. He applied to the US Secret Service and his application was denied.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/04/02/congressman-who-oversees-secret-service-was-rejected-by-secret-service.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/watchdog-top-secret-service-official-wanted-information-about-chaffetz-made-public/2015/09/30/ff280378-67ae-11e5-9ef3-fde182507eac_story.html
Applejinx
@hueyplong: Thing is, it’s not valuable to Russia for the USA to turn into another Russia with a tame strongman at the helm. That’s sort of a shoot-for-the-moon thing, not very practical.
It’s much more useful to Russia to build up Trump this much and then whack him explicitly so that the nutjob Right will go batshit crazy. America sunk in civil war would serve Russian interests as well or better than ‘controlling’ the largely unmanageable Trump. He’s just way more useful to them dead, like at the last minute for maximum insane drama and hysteria.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Major Major Major Major: If that was what the Russians understood about the American political system, they should take PoliSci 1 at any major university.
Those 3rd party voters are IDIOTS.
Tim F.
I would go with the simplest explanation. Having shot his credibility in one direction Comey simply can’t do anything about leaks the other way, whether he wants to or not. I don’t doubt that he willy try to root out that anti-Clinton splinter cell though. Those guys really screwed him up.
SiubhanDuinne
@Schlemazel:
French translation of a Stephen King novel.
Mary G
Anything seems possible at this point, but I’ll stick with my initial impression: They think Hillz is a lock but want to keep both houses of Congress Republican for maximum gridlock until 2018, when the Dems are cooked in the Senate.
DRickard
Soon as I get my time machine working, I’m hopping back to 1975 and selling Cole’s theory to Robert Ludlum (swapping out period-appropriate names for Trump and Comey).
Also too: Comey’s a partisan idiot.
SiubhanDuinne
@Tokyokie:
Herakles, meet Augean Stables.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: Every mansion house needs servants.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Adam L Silverman: Why can’t they take lessons from the FBI fools? Just tell us already; we know he’s a putz, but if there’s more, we need to know that too.
Major Major Major Major
@?BillinGlendaleCA: yes, but we knew that already.
amk
@Mary G: Even RCP with no-toss ups has given it to she-devil. She can lose FL, OH, NC/CO and AZ and still win.
SiubhanDuinne
@Johannes:
What a coincidence. The name of my new band is The Therapeutic Swears.
hueyplong
@Applejinx: That’s what I meant. Sorry if it’s not consistent with what I said. His “purpose” is to get the ultra-right front and center, full of energy and hate. Then he gets martyred and they go bonkers as you noted. If you were going to do it, though, you’d probably have already done it by now, though I guess Nov 8 works as well as Oct 31. Doing it after the election isn’t very helpful unless he wins, and I think it’s going to take more than the Comey b.s. to make that happen.
Usual caveat: I don’t believe any of this nonsense. I’m just saying how a Ludlum novel Putin would be motivated to play it, and we’ve got just enough really stupid but ideologically pure GOPers in powerful positions to assume they’d fuck up a wet dream.
jl
@Mary G: At this point, I give up on what is going on.
Interesting to note the very double standard given to Trump versus HRC, though.
But then the GOP has decided that the best bet is to back Trump and hope to hang on through the resulting gigantic mess, rather than use dirty political tricks to persecute him (which is the route they have taken with HRC). So there is not an army of unscrupulous GOP hacks ginning up dirt and whispering canned BS to the press.
If it wouldn’t throw the election into complete chaos, Comey should be fired already.
patroclus
Comey ain’t George Smiley – he’s more like Esterhazy or Bland in those novels. I googled “Comey” and “treason” just for fun and, instead of showing stories about Friday’s fake scandal dump, it was all right wing nut jobs complaining about how he’s Hillary’s puppet. So the simplest explanation suffices – Comey was getting so much grief from the RWNJ’s for 4 months and had implicitly promised the oversight committees that he would keep them updated that he just decided to send them some vague info about Huma’s/Weiner’s e-mails almost as soon as he heard it. Nothing more than that.
Now, why was an oversight committee overseeing an investigation? Like with the anthrax case (and every other investigation), it clearly shouldn’t have. Nonetheless, it was and Comey felt like he was under an obligation, so he (almost) immediately passed on the vague info. That’s it.
trollhattan
@SiubhanDuinne:
Very nicely played.
Frankensteinbeck
No explanation is complete if it doesn’t include that Comey actually wants to hurt Hillary. He made that clear in the first announcement well before this piece of asshattery.
Adam L Silverman
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Over 45 senior Secret Service officials were punished over this. It is, frankly, unacceptable. Regardless of what Chaffetz disclosed (I do not find him truthful on anything), all of this material for this type of job, as well as for the FBI, DHS, and the various Intel agencies (all 18 of them), is supposed to be closely held by those agencies. This is because the application process is invasive, as is the vetting between conditional offer through being cleared to actually start. You basically give these folks permission to look into everything in your life. The process is done on a whole of the person basis – no one or two or even a handful of things are permitted to disqualify an individual until the context is ascertained and adjudicated. They are not looking for perfect people as there are no perfect people. They are looking for people that can and will keep secrets that need to be kept – including this H/R process information. What these Secret Service officials did in this instance makes it harder to get the best and brightest, not to mention diamonds in the rough, because it shows that if they decide its in their interest, they’ll leak out your confidential application information.
FlipYrWhig
@Kay: if they’re just trying to “disrupt” the election, why are there only damaging disclosures about one of the candidates? The FBI is full of idiots apparently.
pseudonymous in nc
The “Russian server” thing is a nothingburger: it’s probably the consequence of Trump using a crappy enterprise marketing mail providers, and AlphaBank and Spectrum having crappy corporate antivirus. Technical debt, hand-edited zonefiles, weary sysadmin shit. I hope that Team Clinton back off it: even a “make him deny it” push is going to end up in the fog of campaign war.
I’m 99% certain that the big oppo story sitting around waiting to be published is about one or both of the two groups of young women that Trump bought power over — the pageant contestants and the models. Those women are all under TrumpOrg NDAs. I think the Clinton campaign has a sniff of it — Alicia Machado didn’t have the same NDA, so she had more leeway. But it will take some actual journalism for it to go to print, and some brave women to speak out.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
so could this be the Rick Wislon/Liz Mair hidden story?
Cheryl Rofer still around to collect her quatloos? I don’t know who Andrea Chalupa is, but this is starting to get retweeted
Jim, Foolish Literalist
tobie
@Kay:
I’m beginning to feel like we’re living through a coup and no one’s paying attention because it’s so much easier to pick on a female candidate the public has been primed to hate and whose one big mistake in recent years was to use a private email server for her unclassified state department email instead of the extremely cumbersome unclassified server the state department provided. I feel really, really powerless right now.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Adam L Silverman: It’s completely unacceptable – as it should be. I know how intensely invasive that process is – I was being a smartass. Everyone is shocked, I know.
I didn’t know that many petty idiots were disciplined, so thanks for that tidbit.
Chaffetz is still a smarmy, dishonest putz. But they went well over the line with that shit.
@Adam L Silverman:
And Trump’s the ideal dope to catch in one.
Adam L Silverman
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: She’s an author. Wrote a book about Orwell’s Animal Farm. This would not surprise me. Honey traps are common.
Villago Delenda Est
@srv: You were supposed to avoid the brown acid, not double down on the dosage.
Chris
John, you’ve read too many shitty spy novels. Comey is just an idiot.
Adam L Silverman
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): It is something one has to be aware of when traveling.
Major Major Major Major
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Well that’s all just some great evidence that this is true.
khead
On a related note, WVU lost at Oklahoma State this past weekend as part of a grand plot to fix the college football playoffs. It’s about as likely as the events described in this post.
hovercraft
@Kay:
@JPL:
What’s the point of having a supposedly “impartial” FBI?
The GOP is fast eating it’s way through our entire government destroying all of our institutions. Comey went into this job as a respected career official with bipartisan respect, but once he was challenged by members of his own party for not behaving in a partisan way, he caved to them. It’s true the pressure came from from both congress and from within, but instead of standing up to congress and telling his underlings to back the fuck off he tried to appease them with that bullshit editorial of a presser. He now has achieved the worst of all worlds, he has damaged the FBI’s reputation, he has a full blown mutiny on his hands, and his peers all regard him as a fuck up. I don’t buy our blogmasters theory, because no matter what he does now he has no credibility. Every law enforcement agency has disputes on the disposition of investigations, the people closest to them often believe they have a solid case, and do not appreciate it when their superiors disagree with them, that’s part of the job. They should be passionate about their cases, but they should never be allowed to air those disagreements in public. Right now you have warring factions leaking and counterleaking. This is no way to run an institution that is supposed to operate in secrecy until it the indictment is issued.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Major Major Major Major: I call the Cokie rule: it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not, it’s Out There!”
Suffragete City elftx
s i
This is the part that gets me because the disruption had been directed at only one of the candidates..wt everlovin f
Gian
look, if you grade candidates Donald is an F- and Hillary is merely a C-
He is gaga over a hostile foreign power in Moscow and think’s he’s the second coming of James Polk WRT Mexico.
She tells lies she doesn’t need to and are easy to catch her in (sniper fire for example)
But she won’t appoint judges who want to ban condoms, or carpet bomb civilians, and the support trump has from the white nationalist race war types should give any person with a conscience pause.
So that’s why many republicans support him.
Major Major Major Major
@Gian: Sniper fire? Aw, you gave away the game on your first post! Now I won’t even pay the slightest bit of attention to your bullshit.
Johannes
@SiubhanDuinne: I can hardly wait to see you in concert. Is Malcolm Tucker a member?
JR in WV
@khead:
Once you’ve obtained the services of 2 or 3 referees, either by purchasing them or otherwise squeezing them, it’s easy to make the winner whomever you want.
Just saying. Interesting game, it was.
Adam L Silverman
@hovercraft: I’m not defending Comey here, nor what we think we know as the result of the WSJ reporting last night; especially in light of the fact that its author, Devlin Barrett, clearly has a source within the FBI that is trying to settle scores and grind axes based on yesterday’s story and the McCabe story from 24 October. I think, however, we need to keep two things in mind. The first is one of the traps/pitfalls of intelligence analysis, as well as criminal investigation: investigating backwards. Basically one decides on the conclusion and then reasons/researches/investigates backwards. This is not how things are supposed to work, but I’ve seen even experienced analysts and investigators make this mistake and do so in good faith. I’m not saying that the investigators that simply can’t let go of investigating Secretary Clinton have done this, but based on the reporting we saw yesterday that seems to be the case. I also don’t think we have enough information to determine whether this is a good or bad faith example. Though based on Barrett’s reporting it is easy to draw the latter conclusion.
The second issue, what you and Kay (in the previous post) and several others have drawn from the NY Times article on the supposed DOJ/FBI counterintelligence and/or criminal investigations into Trump, Trump advisors/personnel, and/or the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, is the seeming appearance that they’ve drawn the most generous conclusions in regard to reported connections – including that reported out by Foer and posted about by Tom earlier today. My view is that 1) downplaying this makes a lot of sense if asked for comment and cleared by Public Affairs to do so. There are investigative reasons for doing this above and beyond the DOJ policy and guidance about not doing anything to interfere in an election so as not to spook any of the subjects of the investigation, as well as to make them feel comfortable enough to let their guard down as they now think they’re off the hook in the hope they’ll make a mistake that can be exploited to further the inquiry. It is important to remember that these are not just criminal investigations, they are counterintelligence ones and that’s a whole other ball of yarn. And 2) there’s no real mention here of the news that David Corn broke and reported out earlier this evening in Mother Jones. Given the severity of those allegations I would expect no one to say anything about that in any official way, shape, or form as its a full on counterintelligence operation.
Finally, I think its important to remember and understand that despite all the hard work to build an Interagency system and process that sets all of these agencies, departments, and bureaus to the same purpose to do the work that they need to be doing together, there are still significant rivalries. And this includes internal to each of them. Having different parts of the same organization, let alone different agencies, departments, and/or bureaus pull in different directions instead of the same one is not unheard of. For those with Army experience in the last couple of decades the Army equivalents would be the differences/disagreements between 1) the Army’s Special and Conventional Forces, 2) the Generating Army and the Operational Army, 3) Training and Doctrine Command and Forces Command within the Generating Army, and 4) Training and Doctrine Command (a major/four star command) and its subordinate (3 star command) the Combined Arms Center. And this is before we get into inter-Service rivalry for funding and for proponency authority, etc.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: I would say abolish the Air Force, but, good god, the power it would give the perverts in the Navy.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: Yep. I didn’t want to get into the Joint level of rivalry, but the Air Force has an amazing ability to secure funding and proponent authority before any of the other services even know either were negotiable.
Citizen Alan
@PaulWartenberg2016:
I hate that expression. Because IMO if what looks like idiocy continually and invariably redounds to the benefit of the supposed idiot, then guess what? It’s fucking malice.
Adam L Silverman
From Julia Ioffe:
https://twitter.com/juliaioffe/status/793271363918323712
Mnemosyne
@Citizen Alan:
Or, to paraphrase my favorite chapter from Black Beauty, ignorance is just as destructive as active malice, so to say that someone was ignorant of the consequences of their actions shouldn’t mean they get a free pass.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: You actually read Black Beauty?
Sasha
Under the circumstances, “useful idiot” would be the best term.
SFAW
@dmsilev:
I saw those! Hope and Crosby, right?
hovercraft
@Adam L Silverman: I understand intra and inter agency fighting, but it is the responsibility of the leadership to keep it under control. The reports of the fighting between NY and DC are troubling, but there needs to be an internal mechanism for resolving such disputes, they should not be leaking to the media, and those doing the leaking have to be dealt with. The public must have faith in the impartiality of their investigations. I understand that dedicated agents who truly believe in their conclusions and or assumptions can get frustrated when the decision is not what they think is the right one, but as you stated earlier, they go through vigorous screening to qualify for the job on the first place. Part of accepting the job is that the end result is not always what you wish it to be, be it a decision not to indict or an acquittal.
The denial of a probe into the Russia stuff makes sense for the purpose of lulling their quarry into a false sense of security.
My bottom line is that all of the leakers have to be stopped period, these people all take an oath upon assuming the job, divulging confidential information is a violation of that oath, and they should have the book thrown at them. The penalty for people given the power to not only destroy someone’s life, but to end it, should be much higher than the rest of us. It’s a difficult and dangerous job, but if you can’t trust your co-workers how do you perform at your best.
Paul
When the Weiner story came out earlier this year, out of the blue Trump mentioned something about Abedin potentially letting Weiner see classified info. I wonder if he was tipped off.
“Back in 2015, Trump said Weiner was a “perv,” adding that he “obviously is psychologically disturbed” and alleged that his wife, Huma Abedin, a top adviser to Hillary Clinton, was passing sensitive information to him.”
Sounds like a pretty specific charge, no?
Adam L Silverman
@hovercraft: No real arguments on this end. The only thing we don’t know is whether there’s one disgruntled person leaking because everyone else has gone the other way in regards to the Clinton email investigation or, at least, accepted the career prosecutors in DOJ’s public integrity section’s decision not to prosecute or start new investigations into the foundation or whether there’s a lot of them that are in seeming revolt against leadership and the career prosecutors. The stuff being alleged between the NY field office and HQ in DC is based on one person’s tweets transcribing an alleged conversation by an incensed FBI special agent from the DC HQ while waiting for the cabin doors to close on an airplane. I’m not saying that didn’t/couldn’t happen, but…
khead
@JR in WV:
How many referees made Holgorsen call a pass inside his own 15 that resulted in a game changing fumble? I’m gonna guess it’s about the same number of folks that planned the coordinated leaks Cole described.
Stephen
For those interested in the DNS communications story, this paper lists one of the less obvious approaches.
http://scholarworks.rit.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1301&context=other
Millard Filmore
@pseudonymous in nc:
And yet, didn’t the Trump end of the connection change its domain name, and the Russian end was changed to hit the new name ??? That means this is not a zombie operation.
cokane
I really think dumping on Comey here has become excessive, moronic, and frankly misses the point. Comey’s letter itself was perhaps too vague but in of itself does nothing. The real problem is that the news media really does not report these stories with proper context — and has a lot of perverse incentives to make it seem like the race is tightening.
Frankly, if Comey holds out until after the election, Clinton’s presidency gets one more shadow cast over it.
The Russia case is the not the same, because there, Comey isn’t answering to a congressional committee (yet) that can basically chew his ass out over missteps, so, while I get the anger over the different treatment, it’s not the same.
piratedan
Reposted from LGM
this is awesome… so a candidate, previously exonerated by the very same agency of any wrongdoing… yet castigated by the Director of the FBI for her administrative failings…. by his own admissions, can’t prevent his own staff from not following their own agency’s directives when it comes to handling election sensitive investigations and then proceeds to violate those very same set of protocols and laws in order to “inform” us all about additional e-mails found, through another unrelated investigation. Alludes to the fact that they know the e-mails are there, despite not having said warrant to even examine said device… which most likely carries nothing but copies of the previously examined e-mails indicating essentially nothing except a propaganda boondoggle for her opponent…
yet.. on the other hand, we have evidence of a foreign power, at the behest of said candidate himself, hacking a political organization in the middle of an election, for the express purpose of harassment, if not illegally attempting to gaining some means by which to cripple his opponent. Somehow, THIS is too sensitive an item to comment upon on the issue of fairness.
Addendum…
while we’re watching the FBI split hairs on the Russians motives, I feel it’s time to call out the bullshit for the bullshit that it is… The statements that Russians are playing this game to fuck with the elections but not “throw them to Trump” is essentially bullshit. They attacked the Dems, ergo, its done in support of the GOP, which essentially makes it pro-Trump. You want to say that there is some 11th dimensional chess being played… they know that they can’t stop Hillary but if they can screw with the Senate and the House, awesome, more political gridlock in the US for at least another two years.
What bothers me in equal amounts of horror and disbelief, is that we have 17 separate intelligence agencies that are stating that another state is actively fucking with our elections and the supposed bastions of what make us America are essentially asleep at the switch. The press is ignoring this because it doesn’t help drive their horse race narrative or fit into their GOP friendly POV, and the GOP is fucking silent about it, proving them to be the sociopathic power hungry fucks that they are, because whatever dude, if we get to stay in power, whatevs.
the idea that THIS is not THE fucking story of the election is beyond me. We have a foreign government, who is apparently so incredibly scared of a grandma becoming President that they’re willing to subvert our elections is incredible in an of itself. The fact that two of our major institutions are essentially meh about it, scares the living crap out of me.
Robert Paehlke
I read spy novels and murder mysteries too. I think it is more likely that Comey is a Russian agent or has been promised a Supreme Court appointment by Roger Stone.
mere mortal
Perhaps you’re using the wrong metaphor, this feels a lot like the mid game of tabletop Illuminati.
Clearly, this goes back at least as far as the assassination attempt on Harry Reid:
The Bermuda Triangle, with the help of Exercise Equipment Companies, attack the Gambling Mafia.
And the e-mails:
The Society of Assassins, with the help of Russian Mobsters and Rogue Agents, attempt to gain control of The FBI.
And today:
The Gnomes of Zurich, with the help of Big Media and The FBI, attack the Russian Mobsters.
As soon as someone draws Mind Control Lasers, this game will be decided, unless The UFOs decide to use any of their money (I bet they are close to their secret Special Goal, those bastards).