A rather bizarre self-excuse

PeraclesPlease — Fri, 05 May 2017 12:16:00 +0000

In reply to Diane Feinstein interviewing

A rather bizarre self-excuse from Comey:

WHITEHOUSE: So let me offer you this hypothetical. They come to you and say the metadata shows that we have potential information here that could be relevant and could cause us to reopen the information.

It would seem to me that it would be as sensible at that moment to say how quickly can you get a search warrant and how quickly can we get an answer that question because I made a promise to people in Congress that I would get back to them with this information.

And if there's anything real here, you need to get on that pronto so that I can answer that question, so that the search warrant precedes the letter rather than the letter preceding the search warrant, particularly in light of the widely adhered to policy the department not to disclose ongoing investigative materials. And their truly exceptional nature of disclosures. Why not the search warrant first?

COMEY: Well I pressed him very hard on that. And found credible their responses that there was no way -- no way they could review the volume of information they saw on the laptop in the time remaining.

WHITEHOUSE: Except that they did.

COMEY: Well they did, and -- because our wizards at our operational technology division came up with a way to de-dupe electronically -- that as I understand it involved writing a custom software program that's going to help us in lots of other areas. But investigative team said, sir we cannot finish this before the election.

So that -- to my mind that then made the judgment appropriate, the one that I made, not waiting -- waiting -- waiting to make the disclosure.

Like we're a bunch of dumb motherfuckers and don't know that this type of software didn't just get written in 3 days for this case, but that it's standard software for legal discovery and diligence, and quite likely they simply just outsourced the task to a company that specializes in it. Just like they threatened Apple to unlock a phone, all the while knowing they had a contractor that could do it anyway. "Our wizards", my ass.

Why didn't Comey say, "our guys gave me a really shitty estimation that made me decide in a completely inappropriate way, and I fired 2 of them for that broad professional incompetence"?

And all of this was over 12 supposedly classified emails that they'd seen before anyway. Instead of feeling "slightly nauseous", he should be puking all over the podium.

[Transcript at WaPo for those who need]

Diane Feinstein interviewing

PeraclesPlease — Fri, 05 May 2017 11:16:00 +0000

In reply to Since Snowden spilled his secrets, U.S. surveillance targets have surged

Diane Feinstein interviewing Comey: "We've got a, I think, a problem and the issue that we're going to need to address is the FBI's practice of searching 702 data using U.S. person identifiers as query terms. And some have called this an unconstitutional back door search, while others say that such queries are essential to assuring that potential terrorists don't slip through the cracks as they did before. "

Yes indeed - we've got a branch of government that's played shell games and whack-a-mole with FISA & other overisight ever since 9/11, but we've spent less energy investigating this game than in multiple hearings over Benghazi or the preceding question, Hillary's emails. And indeed, how much more important did we know by at least July that the 702s affecting thousands/millions of peopleor Russian hacking affecting the election were, vs. a few dozen possibly confidential emails stored on a not-know-to-be-compromised server?

And it's ironic to me that the FBI has been reprimanded by judges for not ahdering to its constitutional limitations, but Comey felt entitled to chastise a Department leader of another branch of government for whom he couldn't actually prove wrongdoing despite a multi-year investigation. (Hirono came the closest to nailing his hubris to the wall).

And no one asks Comey if he was set up to be in this position, if it was carefully planned that he be put in a "shit or get off the pot" quandary just days before the election - he's convinced he didn't blink. I'm convinced he just largely closed his eyes, pretended this was just another "by the books/doing what's right" moment, but I'd hazard the folks behind this knew how he'd respond (and of course how Chaffetz or similar would respond - where' s Comey's investigation into *that*? may be there, but it'll be in the dark for months to come if not forever).

And I'm still pretty convinced that if Buzzfeed hadn't published Steele's dossier "irresponsibly" *2 months after the election*, we'd still be talking about Trump's victory as earned (as many still are) and about the need to suck it up and accept defeat. There would be no impetus to investigate how Giuliani was getting FBI leaks and felt entitled to discuss with impunity on talk shows, among many many other matters.

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A rather bizarre self-excuse

Diane Feinstein interviewing