RUSSIA/РОССИЯ THREAD—ASSANGE CHRGD W/ SPYING—DJT IMPEACHED TWICE-US TREASURY SANCTS KILIMNIK AS RUSSIAN AGNT
- Thread starter ☑︎#VoteDemocrat
- Start date
Hood Critic
The Power Circle
:ALERTRED:
:ALERTRED::ALERTRED:
ADevilYouKhow
Rhyme Reason
GnauzBookOfRhymes
Superstar
:ALERTRED::ALERTRED:
nytimes.com
Opinion | James Comey: What I Want From the Mueller Report
5-6 minutes
Opinion|James Comey: What I Want From the Mueller Report
I am rooting for a demonstration to the world that the United States justice system works.
By James Comey
Mr. Comey is a former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
- March 21, 2019
Tom Brenner for The New York Times
CreditCreditTom Brenner for The New York Times
The country is eagerly awaiting the special counsel Robert Mueller’s report. Many people know what they want it to say — what they feel it simply must say — namely, that Donald Trump is a criminal who should be removed from office. Or that he is completely innocent of all wrongdoing.
But not everyone knows what it “must” say. Even though I believe Mr. Trump is morally unfit to be president of the United States, I’m not rooting for Mr. Mueller to demonstrate that he is a criminal. I’m also not rooting for Mr. Mueller to “clear” the president. I’m not rooting for anything at all, except that the special counsel be permitted to finish his work, charge whatever cases warrant charging and report on his work.
President Trump’s constant attacks on the special counsel, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department over the past two years raised the prospect that he would interfere to stop the special counsel’s work. It is deeply concerning that the president of the United States would try to protect himself by torching the institutions of justice. But he hasn’t used his authority to end Mr. Mueller’s work. (That would have been a crisis of a different order — shutting down the investigation, rather than just trying to undermine its credibility.) So we are in a position to wonder and hope about the report’s content.
Wondering is fine. But hoping for a particular answer is not. The rule of law depends upon fair administration of justice, which is rooted in complete and unbiased investigation. We are best served when an investigation finds all relevant facts and illuminates the fullest possible view of the truth.
I have no idea whether the special counsel will conclude that Mr. Trump knowingly conspired with the Russians in connection with the 2016 election or that he obstructed justice with the required corrupt intent. I also don’t care. I care only that the work be done, well and completely. If it is, justice will have prevailed and core American values will have been protected at a time when so much of our national leadership has abandoned its commitment to truth and the rule of law.
I am rooting for a demonstration to the world — and maybe most of all to our president and his enablers — that the United States has a justice system that works because there are people who believe in it and rise above personal interest and tribalism. That system may reach conclusions they like or it may not, but the apolitical administration of justice is the beating heart of this country. I hope we all get to see that.
The interests of justice will also be best served by maximum transparency about the special counsel’s work. I don’t know all the considerations that will go into deciding precisely what to say about the completion of that work and when to say it. But because the Department of Justice is guided first and always by the public interest, it should provide details about finished investigations when the public needs to know them, as it traditionally has.
I do have one hope that I should confess. I hope that Mr. Trump is not impeached and removed from office before the end of his term. I don’t mean that Congress shouldn’t move ahead with the process of impeachment governed by our Constitution, if Congress thinks the provable facts are there. I just hope it doesn’t. Because if Mr. Trump were removed from office by Congress, a significant portion of this country would see this as a coup, and it would drive those people farther from the common center of American life, more deeply fracturing our country.
Critics of Mr. Trump should hope for something much harder to distort, or to nurse as a grievance, than an impeachment. We need a resounding election result in 2020, where Americans of all stripes, divided as they may be about important policy issues — immigration, guns, abortion, climate change, regulation, taxes — take a moment from their busy lives to show that they are united by something even more important: the belief that the president of the United States cannot be a chronic liar who repeatedly attacks the rule of law. Then we can get back to policy disagreements.
I just hope we are up to it.
Related
More by James Comey.
James Comey is a former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the author of “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership.”
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.
Last edited:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...am-have-used-unofficial-communications-tools/
washingtonpost.com
Analysis | But their emails: Seven members of Trump’s team have used unofficial communication tools
By Philip Bump
5-6 minutes
Philip Bump
National correspondent focused largely on the numbers behind politics
March 21 at 2:49 PM
President Trump’s objections to Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was secretary of state were never terribly convincing. He didn’t always seem to understand what she had done, and made claims about how she had deleted emails or wiped her server that suggested, at least, a lack of familiarity with technical details. At times, he claimed that Clinton, his Democratic presidential challenger in 2016, had tried to shield unethical activity by using a personal account. At others, he specifically criticized her for having shared classified material through her personal account.
Generally, though, Trump seemed to understand that nearly any sentence that included “Hillary’s emails” or “Hillary’s illegal server” had the same positive effect on his supporters as any other. It became a shorthand for all of the corruption he and his base saw in his rival’s candidacy.
If Trump’s broad criticism was true, that the use of a private account to conduct official business is suspect — if not illegal — and represents an effort to mask illicit activity, then we have bad news for him: An awful lot of that same suspect activity is taking place in his administration.
[Trump demanded top-secret security clearance for Jared Kushner last year despite concerns of John Kelly and intelligence officials]
On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and daughter Ivanka Trump, both advisers to the president, had used either personal email accounts or the messaging application WhatsApp to conduct official business, according to information from the House Oversight Committee. The latter is particularly problematic because messages are encrypted between users, meaning that unless Kushner and Ivanka Trump stored copies of their messages or the recipients turned the messages over to the government, there’s no way to record what was said.
Kushner’s lawyer told House investigators that Kushner “took images of his communications” on a WhatsApp account, then forwarded them to official accounts. Asked whether Kushner had shared classified information over the app, the attorney replied, “That’s above my pay grade.” according to the Journal report.
Imagine Clinton’s attorney having offered that excuse in July 2016.
It wasn’t just Kushner and Ivanka Trump. The committee learned that former deputy national security adviser K.T. McFarland and former adviser Stephen K. Bannon had also, at times, used personal email accounts for official business. Some of those communications, the Journal reports, dealt with a proposal to send nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia. McFarland’s account was through AOL, according to the New York Times.
And these are only the most recent examples. In 2017, the Times reported that other Trump administration officials, including adviser Stephen Miller, former chief of staff Reince Priebus and former National Economic Council director Gary Cohn had all used personal email accounts to conduct official business.
That’s seven officials, past and present, who used personal email accounts: Kushner, Ivanka Trump, Miller, Cohn, Bannon, McFarland and Priebus.
That by itself isn’t illegal, as long as the records are preserved in accordance with the Presidential Records Act. According to House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), Ivanka Trump, at least, may not have been properly preserving all of her records.
The president has had his own issues with using government-preferred communication channels. In May, Politico reported that Trump wasn’t adhering to policies that mandated he swap out his cellphones with regularity, putting his communication at risk. Had Trump shared classified information over his cellphone that might have been intercepted by foreign powers? Well, in May 2017, he shared classified information directly with senior Russian officials in the Oval Office, so it certainly seems possible.
It’s important to remember that much of Trump’s criticism of Clinton’s use of a private server was overwrought and politically motivated. Just as much of Trump’s criticism of former president Barack Obama’s golfing was overwrought or much of Trump’s excoriation about the increase in the federal debt. As president, Trump has often not practiced what he preached on the campaign trail.
At times, in fact, it seems as though he’s practicing specifically what he preached against.