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Bad News for President Trump

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/...le/558611/

The Comey memos are more revealing than they seem.
Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes 7:00 AM ET Politics

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If we accept that Comey’s story has been remarkably consistent over time, and has been corroborated, as Comey has also said, by the contemporaneous FBI witnesses to whom he claims to have told about the events in real time—a few points follow.

First, the president will not realistically defeat an obstruction-of-justice charge—whether it arises in a criminal context or, as is more likely, as an allegation he has to contend with in the political realm—by throwing dust in the air about what happened. The effort so far to discredit Comey by declaring him a liar has the small problem, accentuated by the memos, that he is apparently telling the truth.

And one person who certainly knows that he is telling the truth is Robert Mueller, who has access not merely to the memos but to all of the FBI witnesses in whom Comey confided at the time. Don’t imagine for a minute that what Comey said to them differs materially from what he said to the Senate intelligence committee, to the public, or to his file.

It will all be consistent. And to the extent the president’s forces predicate their arguments on contesting Comey’s account of what happened, they will have to do so relying on the word of a man from whom The Washington Post has documented 2,436 false statements since January 20, 2017. The memos highlight vividly what we already knew: that the facts are a loser for the president.

Second, it follows that the president will have to make his defense on obstruction on different grounds: Ultimately, he’s going to have to argue that the conduct Comey is describing is acceptable behavior.

This would be a tricky business under the best of circumstances, because it’s so manifestly not acceptable behavior in a president. The problem for Trump is that he is most unlikely to get to make this argument under anything like the best of circumstances.

Comey’s story may be the pointy end of the spear the president is facing, but it is not the spear itself—just a piece of it. There’s a lot, after all, that Jim Comey doesn’t know, that isn’t in his testimony, that isn’t in his book, and that isn’t in these memos.

The result is that, third, the facts are likely to get worse—maybe much worse—for Trump. Mueller, remember, doesn’t just know Comey knows. He also has access not only to all the FBI documents and witnesses but also to all the White House documents.

He has access as well to all the White House witnesses. He has had all the key White House staff in front of his team. The only one whose story the public has heard so far is Comey. But that does not mean Comey’s story represents a full accounting of the conduct for which Trump will have to answer to Mueller.

Does it seem likely that the picture is going to look better for the president when we see Comey’s story in the context of the accounts of those of other witnesses?

Or that those other witnesses, when faced with possible jail time for lying to the FBI in their own interviews, told stories that will soften public judgment of the president’s behavior?

In his book, writing about his work as U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, Comey describes how prosecutors draw from a “reservoir of trust and credibility” to do their work. His characterization of the importance of trust to a prosecutor’s work also holds for the role of a witness. Whatever you think of Comey’s actions over the course of 2016, the consistency of his accounts of his interactions with Trump adds more water to that well.

Comey didn’t make this point, but a subject of a criminal investigation, when that person is a public figure, also has a reservoir of trust and credibility. Trump and his supporters are defending the president by arguing that Comey, among others, is lying—but making that argument in the absence of any evidence, and while the body of information corroborating Comey’s account only grows, requires drawing down Team Trump’s own reservoir. And the level of that particular reservoir is, at this stage, very, very low.

Mueller is apparently close to done with his obstruction probe and preparing a report of some kind. Some portion of that report is going to hinge on the credibility of James Comey. For those who were in doubt, the memos give powerful reason to expect that this portion of the report will be damning with respect to the president’s conduct.

But, remember, the memos are boring. The question is how much worse things look when new evidence emerges, and it’s all in one place.

You can’t make websites calling everyone a liar.


Quinta Jurecic is the deputy managing editor of Lawfare

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