The Great American Ass-Covering With James Com

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The Great American Ass-Covering

With James Comey's firing, the entire Justice Department is now hopelessly compromised.


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By Charles P. Pierce

May 9, 2017

Holy hell, what a blunder.

The one thing that may save us from a Trumpian dictatorship is that they're so transcendentally bad at it. If you're keeping score at home, there is an ongoing FBI counterintelligence investigation into alleged collusion between the president*'s campaign and the Russian government.

Late Tuesday, the president* fired the director of the FBI at the recommendation of the attorney general of the United States, who already has recused himself from the investigation because of his involvement in said campaign. Mother of god, these people are morons.

Leave aside whether you thought it was time for James Comey to go. It was time for him to go last July, when he called that unprecedented press conference. There is no reason to believe anything the administration says on this matter.

This, from the letter the president* personally signed, firing Comey, for example:

While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgement of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the Bureau.

Good lord, who emphasizes that when you're firing the guy in charge of investigating your associates? Christamighty, what a dolt.

But the longer bill of particulars lodged against Comey by the current leadership of the Department of Justice (Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, head overseer) is where the true hilarity lies. From The New York Times:

Memos released by the White House show that Rod J. Rosenstein, the newly sworn-in deputy attorney general, recommended that Mr. Comey be fired over how he disclosed the investigation into Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Comey broke with longstanding tradition and policies by discussing the case and chastising the Democratic presidential nominee's "careless" handling of classified information. Then, in the campaign's final days, Mr. Comey announced that the F.B.I. was reopening the case, a move that earned him widespread criticism.

So we are to believe, especially if we are all morons, that Comey was fired because of the administration's dissatisfaction with the activities that, more than anything else, helped make the administration possible. And I am the Tsar of all the Russias.

Can't anybody play this game? I will take any bet in any amount that we will have a special prosecutor looking into the Russia business by midsummer at the latest. Otherwise, I don't know who will take the job. The entire DOJ—including the FBI—is now hopelessly compromised.

And yes, I dread the very thought of who these clowns might appoint—Rudy Giuliani? Chris Christie? Sheriff Clarke? Bo Dietl?— but that seems a secondary concern right now. At present, we're governed by people in a frenzy to cover their own asses. Nobody's hands are on the wheel.

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