June 19, 2017 --

Comey to Richman to Schmidt

The relay of an anti-Trump hit

Add a Times editorial

in tone quite stentorial

Voilia! the perfect prosecutorial (shhh), call it special counsel, fit

Comey, of course, is  James B. Comey, the former FBI director who handed a self-serving memo to Columbia law professor  Daniel C. Richman,  who thereupon handed the memo to New York Times reporter Michael S, Schmidt who has written quite a few of the  anti-Trump hit pieces that have appeared in this anti-Trump propaganda sheet this year. One of Schmidt's Get Trump New York Times articles, published April 23, was co-written with  Matt Apuzzo, Adam Goldman and Eric Lichtblau. This long article, seeking to explain how Comey "shaped an election, " included a quote from, interestingly enough, Comey's preferred leak-cutout Professor Richman, saying, in part, "'Jim sees his role as apolitical and independent [.]"

Hardly. It rather appears that Comey has seen himself as a key player in the Oust Trump Campaign. And so, Richman was given the Comey memo to pass along to his apparent Times contact for purpose of getting a prosecutor to investigate President Trump until grounds are concocted to present to Congress for purpose of impeachment  and  removal from office, and, it is fair to conclude, indictment thereafter. The basis of the impeachment-removal from office - indictment? Whatever The New York Times can come up. It seems to this observer that The Times has been assigned the lead role in the Oust Trump Campaign given its August 21, 2016 editorial, "How Can America Recover From Donald Trump?" The editorial included this pronouncement:

"It could be that the polls are right, and Mr. Trump will go down in flames. But while that will solve an immediate problem, a larger one will remain. The message of hatred and paranoia that is inciting millions of voters will outlast the messenger. The toxic effects of Trumpism will have to be addressed."

Senate Intelligence Committee members did not ask Comey under oath, last week, if he has joined the New York Times-led Oust Trump Campaign with a view of addressing "[t]he toxic effects of Trumpism."  But consider, please, the rest of the quoted passage. The polls relied on by the Times were wrong.  The Trump presidential candidacy was not shot down.  And so, the Times now is devoting its resources to taking "down in flames" President Trump. By what  means?  Why by promoting a"message of hatred and paranoia, " of course. (The combined total of anti-Trump editorials and columns in The New York Times must now number in the hundreds.  One is left to wonder if there is a "1984"- inspired  Two-Minutes Hate directed at  the president, every morning at The New York Times.)

The Times editorial, cited in the   doggerel at the top of this piece, appeared May 11, the day after the Times headlined the firing of Comey Addressed to Rod Rosenstein, the editorial  was called: "A Letter to the Deputy Attorney General." The letter instructed Rosenstein: "You have one choice: Appoint a special counsel who is independent of both the [Justice] Department and the White House."  (A week later, Rosenstein apparently did as he was instructed to do.)

By its terms, the letter did not tell Rosenstein that he must name Robert Mueller to this Get Trump post. Rosenstein did what both The New York Times and Comey desired -- as soon as Michael S. Schmidt reported, May 17: "President Trump asked the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, to shut down the federal investigation into Mr. Trump's former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, in an Oval Office meeting in February, according to a memo Mr. Comey wrote shortly after the meeting." That the FBI, rather than shutting down a Trump-related investigation, has apparently been investigating like crazy is of no consequence. In terms of the governance of the United States, The New York Times is a real-life version of the wife of Rumpole:  It who must be obeyed. 

(It should be noted that The New York Times called for a “special prosecutor,” in its lead editorial, February 17, 2017: “Bring On the Special Prosecutor.” Comey was FBI director at the time, but the Times declared: “James Comey, the embattled F.B.O. director, can’t be trusted to be a neutral investigator…, not after his one-sided interference in the 2016 election compromised the bureau’s integrity and damaged Hillary Clinton’s campaign in its final days.”)

(LPR wonders if Comey, speaking in a tone of “restrained fury,” would call The Times a “liar for that observation. The Times, in its lead editorial, June 9, “’This Is About America’” wrote that “With restrained fury,” Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee, June 8, that President Trump was a liar for his criticism of Comey’s leadership at the FBI.)

Comey also told the Senate Intelligence Committee, June 8, that he gave his the memo of his meeting with President Trump to Richman to give to The Times -- for the purpose of getting a  special counsel  appointed.  

Isn't government of the insiders, by the insiders, for the insiders grand?

And by the way: that February New York Times article -- discredited by Comey, in his Senate Intelligence Committee testimony last week -- that claimed Trump campaign aides had been caught by U.S. intelligence in contact Russian intelligence?  It was written by, you guessed it, Michael S. Schmidt, along with Mark Mazzetti and Matt Apuzzo.

Mr. Schmidt's byline did not appear with The Times' lead story, May 18, reporting "The decision by the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein" to name "Robert S. Mueller III, a former F.B.I. director, as special counsel on Wednesday to oversee the investigation into ties between President Trump's campaign and Russian officials, dramatically raising the legal and political stakes in an affair that has threatened to engulf Mr. Trump's four-month-old presidency."  It is not yet clear why Rosenstein named Mueller, a close friend of Comey's, as special counsel.  

Back on January 13, The Times reported in its lead story that the Justice Department was probing Comey's handling of the Clinton emails "matter" -- to apply a former attorney general's preferred usage, complied with by Comey. Has that investigation been concluded?  If not, will Muller also be looking into Comey's handling of the FBI? (According to Polizette (reached via The Drudge Report, June 13) Mueller is staffing his special counsel team with lawyers who have contributed to Democrat candidates, including one attorney who has worked for the Clinton Foundation.)

The Intelligence Committee did not ask Comey about his being the subject of a Justice Department investigation. Preferring to laud Comey, the senators showed no interest in Comey’s stone-walling of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s requests for information.

The Senate Intelligence Committee also did not seem to be interested in Comey's involvement in Intelgate -- including the fascination of President Obama's intelligence chiefs with the salacious, allegedly Russia-based material in the so-called Steele dossier, reportedly commissioned by anti-Trump Republicans, then finding its way to the Clinton camp, and ending-up with the FBI which is said, at one point, to have offered  Steele $50,000.

Only in this rigged post-inauguration period, with the left refusing to accept the results of the November 8, 2016 presidential election, can a former FBI director get his friend, another former FBI director, to probe a president of whom there is no evidence of wrong-doing, only a torrent of abuse flowing from his enemies -- the Democrat Party and their snotty Republican allies.

The New York Times has not let go of the its truth-challenged claims that Russian-meddling elected Trump president, nor will it.

The paper's May 11 letter to Rosenstein asserted that prior to the firing of Comey, " a dark cloud of suspicion surrounded this president, and the very integrity of the electoral process that put him in office." In its June 9 lead editorial, The Times called "Mr. Trump, the beneficiary of Moscow's meddling [.]" At the New York Times, mere accusations obviate the need for evidence; political hatred obviates any need for  proof. To what end?

The Trump presidency must go down in flames. Why?  Because for The New York Times, sovereignty properly resides among the better sort. But then, hasn't the left always had difficulty with the idea of truly popular government?

The moral for patriots to ponder: The source of danger to America's democratic institutions is not external, not external at all.