Watergate II: FBI Director Comey Complicit in Crime

FBI's L. Patrick Gray                        FBI's James Comey

In 1972, Acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray learned about the White House connection to Watergate, didn’t himself participate in the cover-up, but failed to expose it. As a consequence, the Senate declined to confirm Gray as FBI director. Gray resigned before major evidence against President Nixon became public.

Now we have another FBI director acting to protect the administration that pays his salary. More and more the Hillary Affair is looking like Watergate, though this time, the media switching sides is now helping the coverup.

Thank goodness for Republicans in Congress and for Wall Street Journal reporter Kim Strassel. They are putting the pieces together of a government conspiracy to obstruct justice, one guarded by FBI Director James Comey.

Strassel’s reporting on Wednesday’s House Judiciary Committee questioning of Comey zeroed in on two exchanges:  

Question 1.

Rep. Tom Marino (R., Pa.), an ex-Justice Department prosecutor who knows how investigations work, asked Comey why Hillary Clinton Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills was offered immunity in return for turning over her laptop, a laptop, according to Strassel, “Comey admitted investigators were very keen to obtain.” Marino wondered why Comey didn't simply convene a grand jury, get a subpoena, and seize the laptop?

Strassel writes:

Comey’s answer was enlightening: “It’s a reasonable question. . . . Any time you are talking about the prospect of subpoenaing a computer from a lawyer—that involves the lawyer’s practice of law—you know you are getting into a big megillah” [Yiddish for a long involved story].

The key words: “The lawyer’s practice of law.” What Mr. Comey was referencing here is attorney-client privilege. [But] here’s the rub: When Mills worked at the State Department she was not acting as Clinton’s personal lawyer. She was the secretary's chief of staff.

Mills was allowed to get away with this “attorney-client privilege” nonsense only because she claimed that she did not know about Clinton’s server until after they had both left the State Department. Ergo, no questions about the server.

Question 2.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R., Utah) showed Comey an email Mills sent in 2010 to Justin Cooper, Clinton’s personal employee charged with maintaining her private server. The email reads: “hrc email coming back—is server okay?” Cooper responds: “Ur funny. We are on the same server.”

As Strassel makes clear:

When Clinton had an email problem, Mills . . . called a privately employed Clinton aide and asked specifically about Clinton’s “server.” She did this as chief of staff at the State Department. Chaffetz asked Comey why the FBI [claimed] that Mills was ignorant about the server until later.

Comey suddenly sounded like a man with something to hide. “I don’t remember exactly, sitting here,” he said, in what can only be called the FBI version of “I don’t recall.” . . Really? Only a few minutes before he had explained that the Justice Department was forced to issue immunity to Mills because she had asserted attorney-client privilege. Yet he couldn’t remember all the glaring evidence proving she had no such privilege?

Mills was part of a criminal scheme. [Comey] could have offered immunity in return for the real goods on Hillary. But going that route would have required grand juries, subpoenas, warrants and indictments—all things that Comey clearly wanted to avoid.

As in Watergate I, the FBI seems to be aiding the administration’s “obstruction of justice”.