dagblog - Comments for "Was Comey Blackmailed?"

Comey reauthorized Stellar

PeraclesPlease — Sun, 15 Jan 2017 22:18:16 +0000

In reply to If the whole heroic Ashcroft

Comey reauthorized Stellar Wind a month after the Ashcroft faceoff. The only real result was Comey's ego was boosted with the overwrought hero bit.

Kompromat on all British

PeraclesPlease — Sun, 15 Jan 2017 06:52:22 +0000

In reply to Was Comey Blackmailed?

Kompromat on all British ministers, but not FBI head and incoming Trump team? Unfair!

So Flynn has the Russians on

PeraclesPlease — Sat, 14 Jan 2017 14:03:00 +0000

In reply to Was Comey Blackmailed?

So Flynn has the Russians on speed-dial - no need for the Red Phone anymore, they're all red. Of course Dønald's not president yet, so acting directly against the current one brings its own dangers.

As for the dossier itself, there are other videos mentioned, and this stuff was the subject of Washington dinner parties last summer - just not good enough for the general public. This rumor of more tapes along with other details was corroborated by the BBC reporter thru a different channel in East Europe.

And a FISA request to monitor Twump campaign comms with Russia was finally approved 3 weeks before election day, as rumors had swirled for months.

So as the FBI was feeding info to Giuliani about an upcoming October surprise, it was tight-lipped about a connection between Twump and Russia that had long had more than just the whiffs of rumor to it, at least since his beauty pageant in Moscow.

So what's the story, Mr. Comey - cat's got your tongue?

Update to note: Steele continually miffed that Kremlin giving direct requests that Trump campaign acquiesced to in July, but none at FBI will investigate.

Flynn, on the other hand, was too busy fretting over PizzaGate to understand the signifcance of his own dealings with Moscow.

If you check out EmptyWheel

PeraclesPlease — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 17:35:20 +0000

In reply to If the whole heroic Ashcroft

If you check out EmptyWheel and other accounts, Comey wasn't nearly as principled as reputed to be - he shortly after endorsed a bunch of end-arounds on government oversight, extending the reach of the surveillance people think he prevented. Some people get to have it both ways.

Yeah, but waiting for the

PeraclesPlease — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 17:29:00 +0000

In reply to I say this out of sadness,

Yeah, but waiting for the media to actually investigate something and anoint it as true is rather a long hard road. 1 1/2 years of Benghazi hearings, all the innuendo about emails, wondering what the FBI was dragging out so long...

How much of our mainstream news will continue to be innuendo from Drudge and Breitbart slightly repackaged?

But if I go back to the Bradley Manning trial, when Firedog Lake hid its heyday, the typical media couldn't be bothered to attend the trial I think McClatchey did). Marcie Wheeler did more to dissect US surveillance and FISA abuse than any mainstream rag. And on and on...

A dossier this explosive from an investigative private eye/ex-spook with excellent credentials - may be eventually proven false, but nobody held off publishing the Panama Papers, and a lot of that was just standard records that tied in fairly normal activity with some possible illegal.

Meanwhile, the MSM does a hit job on the Clinton Foundation, on "Clinton Cash", etc, etc...

How much time did they spend on voter obstruction and suppression? They give air time to Hans van Spakovsky lying about voter fraud, but how much proactive time goes into seeing if the election can really be hacked? There's a journalist on the left (Greg Palast) who believes there's evidence to suspect it. I'm not sure I believe it (though I like the idea of being always skeptical about how hard and thorough defenses are) - but did the MSM investigate these and other issues, or were they in a hurry to get on with discussing the Trump presidency which is much more clickbait?

In short, screw their outrage. You have newscasters/debate monitors who won't even fact check participants, the standard routine on Fox and elsewhere. Real voter issues were routinely ignored and details of important issues never got reported. No one can figure out Trump's net worth'? What was the structure nd # of emplyees in Trump's company and how many toimeimes was he sued?

Well, the ante just got upped.

If the whole heroic Ashcroft

Obey — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 17:14:44 +0000

In reply to Was Comey Blackmailed?

If the whole heroic Ashcroft hospital bed story has any truth to it, Comey seems principled and hard to blackmail. In order of relative conviction I go with:

1. He wrote the letter to Congress knowing that the Weiner emails and their link to Hillary would leak, given the anti-Hillary clique at the FBI, and that any resistance from him would be perceived as a cover-up, thus worsening the media outcry. His best-case scenario was to write the letter, expedite the investigation and publish the result as fast as possible to limit the damage.

2. He really really hates the Clintons and that biased his perception of the importance of the Weiner emails and his duty to apprise Congress, as promised, of new developments in the investigation.

3. He got abducted by aliens who happen to be Trump supporters, and was induced by an anal probe to write that letter.

4. The Russians have something so dark and depraved on Comey that he was willing to sacrifice the future of the country for the sake of the Russians keeping it under wraps, knowing that he will be their bitch for the next four years, and that the fact of doing something so heinous through blackmail is worse than anything else imaginable they might have on him.

And 3 is much more plausible than 4 for me.

No offense intended, I do get that this Trumpian age makes the horizon of possible possibles so much broader. But still...

I say this out of sadness,

Peter Schwartz — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 16:07:56 +0000

In reply to Just got unfriended by a good

I say this out of sadness, not to suggest that "he's close minded" or a troll or any other sort of compromised or devious actor. Some people are just sick of the endless conspiracy theorizing that isn't based in fact. That is, KNOWN fact.

Just got unfriended by a good

Peter Schwartz — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 16:05:00 +0000

In reply to Was Comey Blackmailed?

Just got unfriended by a good friend and a very intelligent person for reposting this brief post on FB.

The head of CBS said that

rmrd0000 — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 15:13:33 +0000

In reply to A lot of it isn't even about

The head of CBS said that Trump was bad for the country but good for CBS' bottom line. The head of CNN said essentially the same thing. Lewandowski was on the Trump payroll but still had a role as a news analyst. The WSJ said that it would not call out Trump when he lied. MSNBC is overjoyed at welcoming Megan Kelly and Greta Van Susteren as objective analysts. The news media is severely compromised.

A lot of it isn't even about

PeraclesPlease — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 14:50:00 +0000

In reply to All good points. I'm almost

A lot of it isn't even about Trump.

Joan Walsh declared yesterday, " When Trump Pits Journalists Against Each Other, He’s Won" - gee, Joan, whereyabeen? If you go to RealClearPolitics anytime in the last year, you see story viewed from the left followed by one viewed from the right, or vice-versa. That doesn't mean both are right, but our media landscape is a constant state of denial pitting one news corp against another.

Journalists are up in arms about Buzzfeed, even though Trump long ago gave the head of Breitbart a major role in his campaign, and Tier 1 newspapers like WaPo and NYTimes have been botching basic news reporting and participating in the Wikileaks leaks, rumor mongering and echoing rightwing opp points like any other channel, disseminating like all the others.

A few years too late, ladies & gents - you sold your soul for a few more clicks quite some time ago.