TRUMP’S BIGGEST BLUNDER – NOT FIRING COMEY

Obama and his FBI Director

The FBI is investigating Russian meddling in our election, including “whether there was any coordination” between the Trump campaign and Russia, Director James Comey said at a public hearing of the House Intelligence Committee Monday (3/20).

The investigation began last July, likely will go on for some time.

There is no evidence to date Russian meddling affected the outcome of the election, or that anyone in the Trump campaign colluded with the Russkies.

The Russians were more interested in messing with the U.S. and with Hillary than in trying to elect Trump, whom they didn’t think could win, Comey said.

Nor is there evidence the Obama administration “wiretapped” Trump Tower, said Comey and Admiral Mike Rogers, Director of the National Security Agency.

There never was a “physical wiretap” of Trump Tower, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Cal, the Intelligence Committee chairman, said on Fox News Sunday. But there are possible “other surveillance activities” involving Trump and/or associates. Here’s one off the wall possibility.

Comey and Rogers also vehemently denied that GCHQ, the British counterpart of NSA, spied on Trump.

“Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News President Obama went outside the chain of command,” Judge Andrew Napolitano claimed March 14. “He used GCHQ.”

In “Trump, Obama, and the Easter Bunny” (TTP 3/10),  I cited the sudden resignation of GCHQ Director Robert Hannigan as one reason I suspected President Trump was aware of surveillance long before his tweetstorm.

Napolitano’s claim is no more “evidence” than the stories based on anonymous sources about Trump being in bed with the Russians. Fox News has suspended him.

He’d heard from two IC friends GCHQ was passing information, but it wasn’t done at the direction of Obama, former CIA analyst and State Department counterterrorism chief Larry Johnson told CNN’s Brian Stelter Monday (3/20).

This only sorta kinda supports Napolitano’s claim, because Johnson may have been one of his sources. Johnson favors closer relations with Russia, has been a guest on RT (Russian Television).

It is in Russia’s interest to sow distrust in and dissension between U.S. and U.K. intelligence agencies, which may account for the vehement denials of Comey and Rogers that seem carefully parsed.

It would be “expressly against the construct” of intelligence agreements with the British to have them spy on Trump, Admiral Rogers said. “I have seen nothing on the NSA side that we ever engaged in such activity,” or that Obama ever asked NSA to spy on Trump.

Leaking classified information to the news media is a “serious crime,” Comey acknowledged after sharp questions from Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-SC.

There were six Obama administration officials who would have had known about former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s phone conversation with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, Comey told Gowdy. Ten to 20 in NSA would have had that info, Rogers said.

Comey said he didn’t know how many in the FBI might have known about the wiretapped conversation.  Why not?  He’s the FBI Director!

One Democrat after another cited innuendo about Trump in newspaper stories. Gowdy got Comey to condemn them as hearsay that could never be introduced as evidence in a courtroom. He couldn’t correct misinformation in particular stories without giving away classified information, Comey told Gowdy.

Ranking Democrat Adam Schiff, D-Cal, said weakening the GOP platform plank on Russia and President Trump’s demand NATO allies pay their fair share indicated “collusion.”

The first charge is false. As Byron York writes here, the language in the platform criticizing Russian aggression against Ukraine was strengthened, not weakened.

The second is ridiculous. Getting European allies to pay their fair share strengthens NATO, which is very much not in Russia’s interest.

The FBI most likely is investigating former campaign manager Paul Manafort, his business partner Roger Stone, and investment adviser Carter Page.  These are sleazy, smarmy guys, but the wrongdoing of which they’re suspected apparently has nothing to do with Trump.

Manafort is being investigated for work he did for Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovyich, a Russian stooge, in 2013. Trump may have fired Manafort because he learned about the FBI investigation.

Manafort chose Carter Page as “the go-between for the Trump campaign and Russian interests,” Schiff charged. Manafort issued this statement in response.

Page was listed as a foreign policy adviser to Trump, but was never on the payroll. The Trump campaign severed ties to Page after he made a speech harshly critical of America at Moscow’s New Economics School in July.

“On the question of the Trump campaign conspiring with the Russians here, there is smoke, but no fire at all,” said former CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell, who retired in 2013.

Where there is a huge smoking fire being ignored by Comey’s FBI is the web of corruption between Hillary’s campaign manager John Podesta and Putin-run Russian companies, reported by the Daily Caller yesterday (3/21).

“It is…a simple fact…clear, hard details of coordination between (Trump’s) aides and Putin’s haven’t emerged,” admitted hyper-leftie Buzzfeed Ben Smith.

What do we know now that we didn’t know before the Intelligence Committee hearing? Not much.

Did the Obama administration spy on Trump and/or associates (legally or illegally)?

We still don’t know. The news organizations that reported a FISA warrant was issued to surveil SOMETHING Trump related are standing by their stories. Comey and Rogers implied this isn’t true, but parsed their statements carefully enough to not exclude the possibility.

Who is/are the leaker(s)?

We don’t know, but the suspect list has narrowed.

Is the FBI trying to find the leaker(s)?

That isn’t clear from Comey’s answers.

For the “mainstream” media, the big takeaways from the hearing are Trump’s claim Obama “wiretapped” him is false, and the FBI is still investigating whether there is a connection between Russian meddling and his campaign.

If after eight months the FBI has found “no evidence” of collusion, they’re not likely to find any. But the longer the investigation drags on, a dark cloud lingers over the White House. Read here about the FBI’s coming “Catch 22.”

Trump’s tweet is technically untrue, but if the stories the Lying Swine are standing by were accurate, then the president was fundamentally correct. (It’s hard to put much nuance into 140 characters or less.)

“We are still at the beginning phase of a look at what kind of surveillance took place and why,” White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said Monday (3/20).

If Team Trump continues publicly to accuse the Obama administration of spying, they’d better have evidence to back them up.

I still think the president’s original tweetstorm was wise (or fortunate) because it shifted focus from “Is Trump in bed with Putin?” to “Did Obama spy on Trump?”

But once it was clear the president’s tweet was technically untrue (no FISA warrant was issued for Trump Tower), the president should have said it was his bad for believing what the “mainstream” media reported, cited the stories on which he relied.

This would have taken wind out of the sails of the Lying Swine. Journalists would have had to come to grips with the fact that if what they said was true, the president was fundamentally right.

And if Mr. Trump was wrong, it was because their stories were bogus. “You idiot, you believed our lies” is not a persuasive argument.

“By refusing, over and over again, to back down from Trump’s original, far-fetched charge, his administration has inflicted a lot of completely unnecessary damage upon itself,” said Jim Geraghty of National Review. “With every unsubstantiated accusation, the administration loses a bit of credibility it will need when it makes an accurate charge.”

If there is a smoking gun, it may be found in the Steele dossier, which I’ll write about next week. But until they have solid evidence in hand, the president and his aides should stop talking and tweeting.

Instead, the president should start acting by firing Comey.  Many people consider his not doing so two months ago was a huge blunder.  Better late than never.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret, and was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force during the Reagan Administration.  Until his retirement in January 2017, he was the national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.