Posted on 07/20/2017 9:39:29 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
In a wide ranging interview with The New York Times, Trump threw his Attorney General Jeffrey Sessions under the bus for deciding to recuse himself from the Russia probe. A decision Trump called very unfair to the president.
But, maybe even more shocking, he claims that FBI Director James Comey tried to hold the salacious dossier over his head, in order to gain leverage over him. It had previously been reported that when administration officials briefed the president at Trump Tower in January, Comey pulled him aside and told him about the details of the now infamous dossier which included unverified reports of Trumps sexual encounters while in Russia.
Why did Comey bring this up? Trump has a new theory.
From The New York Times report:
In the interview, Mr. Trump said he believes Mr. Comey told him about the dossier to implicitly make clear he had something to hold over the president. In my opinion, he shared it so that I would think he had it out there, Mr. Trump said. As leverage? Yeah, I think so, Mr. Trump said. In retrospect.
The president dismissed the assertions in the dossier: When he brought it to me, I said this is really, made-up junk. I didnt think about any of it. I just thought about man, this is such a phony deal.
The 35 page document, first published by Buzzfeed, was full of uncorroborated allegations that were comprising for the president was reportedly written by former British spy Christopher Steele .
During congressional testimony in June, Comey said he alerted President Trump to the dossier for the following reasons (very different from what Trump contends):
The IC leadership thought it important, for a variety of reasons, to alert the incoming President to the existence of this material, even though it was salacious and unverified. Among those reasons were: (1) we knew the media was about to publicly report the material and we believed the IC should not keep knowledge of the material and its imminent release from the President-Elect; and (2) to the extent there was some effort to compromise an incoming President, we could blunt any such effort with a defensive briefing
Comey was asked by a Senator Richard Burr whether the FBI was able to confirm any criminal allegations contained in the document. Comey told the senators that he couldnt answer the question in the public forum because it might go into some details of the ongoing public investigation.
Bingo!
Shades of J. Edgar.
I really like your take on this. I have considered same but get so disallusioned. Please let it be so.
Yeah, regarding McCain, there just may be a smattering of justice this side of judgment day.
I said that months ago.
What dirt?
I'm so sick of all of this I could just spit. Trump should fire Mueller and stop this Russia nonsense. Then he should tell Sessions to go after all the above people big time and he expects a report on each one by the end of the year. Hillary said, "We'll all hang." Why did she say that? Only she knows the extent of their crimes, back to 1992.
I'm cutting Sessions a lot of slack. Can you just imagine all the crimes of the past eight years he now knows about? He must be just overwhelmed. He is trying with the MS13 thugs and the border stuff. The asset thing, not so much. Anyway, we'll see what happens from now to year end. I hope he doesn't give up and stays on. He's a good man.
Rush is right, paraphrasing, "It's not Republicans and Democrats, it's not the left vs. the right, it's Trump and his base vs. the establishment and deep state."
The establishment is saying no to Trump's agenda. The deep state is continuing the Obama spying and leaking. Trump needs to get a handle on this. Fire all the people he can. Get rid of the Obama holdovers. Get the new FBI guy in and have a meeting with him and tell him he's on probation. "Go after Comey, Clinton, Podesta, Lynch, Holder, Abedin, Power, Rice, Mills for starters. Also, tomorrow I want you to fire McCabe but first get all the files he has on Hillary first. I want some results by the end of the year. This is priority one. Any questions?" If he doesn't produce, put Jay Sekulow, Rudy Giuliani or some other pitbull in as FBI director and get er' done!
Our republic cannot stand without addressing this complete travesty of justice. If it is swept under the rug, all of it will surely happen again, and to a greater degree.
Not enough being fired. He needs to clean house sooner then later
You both are speaking my language!
Truth is rare in the White House. The thin skinned get a fast burn.
“I believe Trump... but dont understand why he would waste his time giving the NYT an interview.”
Hey Jeff, lets pretend to be adversarial, that will give the press less leverage. Okay?
Sure Boss!
11 posted on 7/20/2017, 9:52:31 AM by Born to Conserve
I believe Trump is making moves designed to fire Mueller.
Comey does what Weasels do. It’s in his DNA. Just like his mentor, weasel Mueller.
It reminds me of the movie The Firm, where Wilford Brimley is the law firm's "enforcer".
He blackmails the Tom Cruise character with pictures of an affair, then says how I'm you "friend", if you hear about anyone looking for the pictures, I'll be sure to help cover this up, so your wife doesn't know about this.
Only in the Trump case/dossier there are no pictures, no evidence of anything.
I have no idea what Comey was thinking.
You can't "blackmail" someone if there are no actual "goods" to hold over their head.
How else to flush our Sessions? He can't speak with him privately about WTF he did so instead he floated his disgust over the recusal in the NYT. And what does Sessions do after hearing his boss tell him he screwed the pooch? He says he's staying. I've lost all respect for Sessions.
Calif. finds that that dossier may cause Cancer..
LOL! Has anybody checked McCain’s servant who retrieved it from overseas?
I think that weasel Comey and the other weasrls in the FBI already had a copy.
Juan was late in piling on.
McCabe should have been fired first.
How did Comey know that exactly?--was it because the intelligence community had leaked the material on Trump's classified briefing? (Omitting that David Corn at Mother Jones had already reported on the dossier as an attempted October Surprise, which current coverage keeps curiously omitting.)
Wow that was a smart catch.
I HATE it when its not me, which is often :)
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