President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

James Comey Has a Story to Tell. It’s Very Persuasive.

In his absorbing new book, “A Higher Loyalty,” the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey calls the Trump presidency a “forest fire” that is doing serious damage to the country’s norms and traditions.

“This president is unethical, and untethered to truth and institutional values,” Comey writes. “His leadership is transactional, ego driven and about personal loyalty.”

Decades before he led the F.B.I.’s investigation into whether members of Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election, Comey was a career prosecutor who helped dismantle the Gambino crime family; and he doesn’t hesitate in these pages to draw a direct analogy between the Mafia bosses he helped pack off to prison years ago and the current occupant of the Oval Office.

A February 2017 meeting in the White House with Trump and then chief of staff Reince Priebus left Comey recalling his days as a federal prosecutor facing off against the Mob: “The silent circle of assent. The boss in complete control. The loyalty oaths. The us-versus-them worldview. The lying about all things, large and small, in service to some code of loyalty that put the organization above morality and above the truth.” An earlier visit to Trump Tower in January made Comey think about the New York Mafia social clubs he knew as a Manhattan prosecutor in the 1980s and 1990s — “The Ravenite. The Palma Boys. Café Giardino.”

The central themes that Comey returns to throughout this impassioned book are the toxic consequences of lying; and the corrosive effects of choosing loyalty to an individual over truth and the rule of law. Dishonesty, he writes, was central “to the entire enterprise of organized crime on both sides of the Atlantic,” and so, too, were bullying, peer pressure and groupthink — repellent traits shared by Trump and company, he suggests, and now infecting our culture.

“We are experiencing a dangerous time in our country,” Comey writes, “with a political environment where basic facts are disputed, fundamental truth is questioned, lying is normalized and unethical behavior is ignored, excused or rewarded.”

 

From the comments in that Popehat thread:


MC‏ @mchayden100 2h2 hours ago


Replying to @Popehat @MichaelAvenatti


Another twist is that the LLC Cohen created to make this NDA through does not have any Fifth Amendment rights.

Earl j. Slick‏ @ejslick 1h1 hour ago

A person most knowledgeable deposition notice to the LLC would probably result in some good fun and games. And that LLC is the only party to the agreement other than Daniels.

 

For some of us who think--if you have nothing to hide then you should testify--I would love to hear from a lawyer the reasons why they should not. (sometimes hard to tell on the net, but no snark intended)

 

Mueller Will Label Dangling Pardons as Obstruction of Justice Just as He Drops More Conspiracy Charges – emptywheel

 

He can label whatever he wants. Trump will insist that he can't obstruct justice because he gets to decide what that means as the head of the executive branch, or some such nonsense, and no Republican will vote to punish him over it. At the end of the day, Mueller is toothless.

 

Because the government will seize on any slight ambiguity and then you’re fucked.

 

Keep in mind also that there are many elements to crimes. You admit to even something innocuous - “Yeah, I held an account there” - and you just made their job easier.

DO NOT TALK TO THE STATE IF YOU DON’T HAVE TO. EVER.

 

This is what you really meant, right?

 

It does what it was designed to do: Preserve upper-class white power.

 

A top Ryan aide texted me this morning: “It’s going to be a civil war. No one knows how bad this will get. Kevin [McCarthy] is such a fucking moron he’s going to get rolled by Pelosi every day. FML."

Donald Trump Takes Out Paul Ryan, and ‘It’s Going to Be a Civil War’

 

Good advice, that.