Enough Was Enough’: How Festering Anger at Comey Ended in His Firing

If the FBI and other intelligence agencies weren’t monitoring the Trump campaign, please explain to me how “anonymous sources” outed MIchael Flynn’s interactions with Russia using classified U.S. intelligence as sources.

You can quibble over whether physical devices were used in Trump Tower (they aren’t usually necessary anymore) or whether the primary target was the Trump campaign or Russian ambassadors, but the simple fact of the matter is that the Obama White House was collecting a lot of data and unmasking links to Trump personnel. To me, that qualifies as being effectively “wiretapping.”

I would guess the final straw for Comey was when he totally bobbled the account of Anthony Weiner’s laptop, and the FBI didn’t even wait an hour before somebody talked to the press about his mistake. What that meant for the Trump administration is that everybody could expect the same kind of mistakes in an expanded investigation of connections to Russia—one where (see above) Comey had clearly already missed the main point. It also meant that Comey had a mutiny on his hands in the FBI.

To do worse than Comey, Trump would have to nominate Mike Nifong, to put it mildly.

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.

Michael Medved, the most sane conservative political commentator on the airwaves, suggests Trump turn this into a brilliant coup by appointing Merrick Garland to be the new FBI Director. Garland had a distinguished career as a prosecutor before becoming a judge.

Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.

Regarding Garland, I don’t know about him well, but given the track record of Obama administrators and nominees being rather “ethically pliable”, I’d have to be persuaded that he wasn’t among this group before supporting that. Sad to say, I’m not quite sure how we’d figure that out. I see some people I think are rock solid, and half of them go off the left ditch into “ethical pliability” and the other half seem to go off the right ditch into conspiracy theory.

Sad state we’re in, and I’ll be grateful if someone proves me pessimistic.

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.