Jim Comey plays ‘Who do you trust?’
The former head of the FBI — testifying under oath — has called the president of the United States a liar. There is no happy face you can put on that, no softer word you can use to avoid the obvious implications.
Comey told the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday that following his firing “the explanations, the shifting explanations, confused me and increasingly concerned me . . .
“The administration then chose to defame me and more importantly the FBI by saying that the organization was in disarray. That it was poorly led. That the workforce had lost confidence in its leader. Those were lies, plain and simple. And I am so sorry that the FBI workforce had to hear them, and I’m so sorry that the American people were told them.”
Now the nation has grown sadly inured to Donald Trump’s version of “facts” or “alternative facts” in matters big and small — from the size of his inaugural crowd to his allegations that President Obama “tapped” him at Trump Tower.
But to a seasoned prosecutor like Comey, well, there is truth and there are lies and it’s not so difficult to tell the difference. And so given, as he put it, the “nature of the person” with whom he was dealing, Comey chose to make detailed notes immediately following each meeting or conversation with President Trump.
“I was honestly concerned he might lie about the nature of our meeting, so I thought it important to document,” Comey testified.
Asked later whether he thought any tapes existed of those conversations — something Trump had alluded to in a tweet — Comey replied, “Lordy, I hope there are tapes.”
No, this is not St. Comey of the Hill. He was entirely candid when owning up to leaking some of his own notes of those conversations following his May 9 firing by using a friend at Columbia Law School as an intermediary to the media. And he acknowledged doing so with the hope of triggering the appointment of a special counsel — an effort that was indeed successful in forcing the hand of the Justice Department.
And now it will remain for Robert Mueller to determine if Trump’s attempts to shut down an investigation of his former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, or the firing of Comey himself — if intended to lift “the cloud” of the broader Russia investigation — constitute an attempt to obstruct justice.
At one point in the hearing, Comey was asked flat out why the nation should believe his version of events.
He replied, “As I used to say to juries, when I talked about a witness, you can’t cherry pick it. You can’t say, I like these things he said but on this, he’s a dirty rotten liar. You’ve got to take it all together.”
As a seasoned prosecutor he posed the question, “So why did he kick everybody out of the Oval Office? Why would you kick the attorney general ... the chief of staff out to talk to me, if it was about something else? So that, to me, as an investigator, is a significant fact.”
The totality of such “significant facts” will be weighed against the track record of a man whose reputation for sticking to facts is shaky at best. But clearly Donald Trump has worked overtime at putting his presidency at stake. And for what?