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[billeh]

If he didn't come forward with it, the Russians would just leak it.

Tried to get in front of it, I guess.

 

[Cagey]

If it was fake and the GOP were informed and they continued to push the email narrative along with the right wing media then we have so so many more questions here. This is really disturbing.

The haphazard bolding in the OP may have had you overlook the follow up paragraph.

In classified sessions with members of Congress several months ago, Comey described those emails in the Russian claim and expressed his concern that this Russian information could "drop" and that would undermine the Clinton investigation and the Justice Department in general, according to one government official.

Still, Comey did not let on to lawmakers that there were doubts about the veracity of the intelligence, according to sources familiar with the briefings. It is unclear why Comey was not more forthcoming in a classified setting.

 

[Zolo]

Last election season there was a media normalization of Trump that may have lead to short-term ratings boosts, but has clearly created a rift between about 1/3-1/2 of the country and the very concept of the objective free press.

I think it's going to be very hard to pull back from this. It's taken American tribalism to a new level.

I think it's more that at this point, we hope the actual percentage is close to about 1/3 which will just have to be left behind and that voters now need to take Trump as a lesson as to why they need to get involved with each election they can (or at least show up for the ones in house/senate/president).

 

[Fenderputty]

Okay, I wonder if people realize what's going on here? Donald Trump's administration, lawyers, are now actively leaking on their own to the papers to combat and damage the credibility of one of the biggest potential witnesses against him, which we know to be James Comey.

Is it possible that this is indeed true? Yes. It could be true. Or there could be an element of truth, but be very careful that we aren't falling for a well orchestrated campaign by Donald Trump's team of lawyers designed to greatly damage Comey as a witness before he has a chance to speak his piece. And I pray Democrats in Congress don't fall for or get caught up on this, and focus on the what the most important issue is right now, and that's whether or not Donald Trump is guilty of obstruction of justice, and did his campaign act as a willing partner to the Russian government's attempts to influence our election.

And even if he knew it was fake, he's still wisely aware of the fact that even fake information leaked to the press, can be quite damaging if it leaks in an incomplete fashion that doesn't tell the full story. He's not entirely wrong for attempting to get out ahead of this. And let's not pretend as if Bill Clinton's foolish meeting with Loretta Lynch, whether this story is a Russian plant or not (which it likely is), did not add some element of urgency to get out ahead of even a fake piece of information planted by Russia. The media, politicians and many people in this country aren't very well known for their appreciation for nuance. They would ignore or overlook the strong possibility of some of the information clearly being a Russian plant, and would just associate what they know to be true, which is Bill and Loretta Lynch's meeting on that plane, to lend credibility to the idea that Lynch might have actually made the assurances to the Clintons that the Russian planted e-mail suggests.

So, yea, be very careful this isn't a Trump defense team orchestrated leak, just like I fully believe that the manchester bombing leak was also intentionally done by the Trump team to introduce an element of credibility to their constant whining about the danger of leaks. You can fully expect Trump to start up some serious investigation on the very subject of that leak as a distraction.

.

https://twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/866374018051584005

I hate that we can't embed twitter in the age of 2017.

 

[Lord Frieza]

The haphazard bolding in the OP may have had you overlook the follow up paragraph.

I think it's pretty clear why he didn't even if they don't want to go there (yet): because he didn't trust the GOP lawmakers in question with that information. Not long after Trump was inaugurated, I remember there was a briefing Comey gave about the Russian investigation, and no GOP members were invited if I recall.

 

[djplaeskool]

This is going to be an Oscar winning movie one day.

I would LOVE to hear a JFK / Mr. X style monologue explaining this web that has been woven.

 

[EatinOlives]

None of this is true. This basically matches up with previous stories, making it more of a large piece in a complicated puzzle. This also doesn't really do anything to discredit Comey at all. If anything, this really shows his overall bipartisan attempt, even if it was horribly flubbed in multiple ways.

The idea that the Trump administration is intentionally leaking stuff to damage the reputation of others is also mostly bunk. Very little of what we have gotten from these leaks have done, and almost none of them have done anything helpful at all to the administration. The only time something like this has possibly happened is the tax return thing with Maddow, but I'm even starting to think that was a fluke and something else was going on there.

This. Let's not go around brushing Comey's flubs under the rug just because we want Trump out of office. The two are not mutually exclusive.

 

[KoopaTheCasual]

Jeeeeesus that thread title needs updating.

My heart sank into stomach when I read that, because I thought it was a clear case for Republicans to tarnish Comey's testimony, saying he acted on information he knew was false.

He didn't act on fake information. He acted in response to it. /nuance

Confusing thread title aside, this is crazy to what extent the Russians straight up fucked Comey over. This is going to be one hell of a movie/book/mini-series, when it's all said and done.

So basically, Comey made sure he wouldn't be fired too quickly by a Trump Admin by getting ahead of everything relating to Hillary, thus giving him more time to investigate Trump/Russia ties.

Yea, pretty crazy.

 

[theWB27]

I think it's pretty clear why he didn't even if they don't want to go there (yet): because he didn't trust the GOP lawmakers in question with that information. No longer after Trump was inaugurated, I remember there was a briefing Comey gave about the Russian investigation, and no GOP members were invited if I recall.

I think people are overlooking how untrusting he's been of the GOP since it's been public.

 

[uncredited male]

So Comey felt the need to tell Congress that he had reopened an investigation. An investigation that he had closed ultimately due to a key piece of evidence being fabricated by the Russians. Which he had decided not to tell them.

That worked out well for everyone.

 

[iammeiam]

I guess I didn't understand the OP, I was making a side comment since I was under the impression it was because of his comments over Hillary's carelessness(at the end of the email probe) that helped make her appear unelectable.

I get that he wanted to get out in front of it and continue the narrative to not be suspected.

What appears to have happened is that Comey was aware the Russian thing was a fake. He also knew there was a high chance of it being leaked. If it got out, he'd have to discredit it because it's a potential election-changing lie. By to discredit it, he'd have to burn some sources, which would be incredibly bad to-forward as Russia wasn't going to slow down any time soon.

So he schedules a press conference to end the investigation before the fake docs can leak and ruin Clinton's rep. He goes overboard calling her careless, but as far as I can tell his general motive at the time was trying to protect the race from being manipulated by Russia.

Totally didn't work, by my read here is that Comey did the best he could come up with for legitimately non-partisan reasons. There may have been a better route, but he tried.

 

[NoFaceNico]

The thread title is really confusing.

I get that they didn't want the info to be leaked later and misused but the FBI held a lot of credibility, why not just outright dismiss the leak as fake should it come out and give no other details? I don't see how they figure they would need to give away critical info instead of just flatly denying its validity.

 

[SenjutsuSage]

https://twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/866374018051584005

I hate that we can't embed twitter in the age of 2017.

No vet is fool proof. There are ways for "new sources" with similar levels of access or credibility to easily deliver news to the media. It doesn't mean they are being given false info, not at all. It's just that the source is putting their spin on the information. We know Trump and his team is incompetent, but we can't keep assuming that they will always be so, or won't actually do some smart things once in a while. Underestimating this man is how he became President.

 

[theWB27]

No vet is fool proof. There are ways for "new sources" with similar levels of access or credibility to easily deliver news to the media. It doesn't mean they are being given false info, not at all. It's just that the source is putting their spin on the information. We know Trump and his team is incompetent, but we can't keep assuming that they will always be so, or won't actually do some smart things once in a while. Underestimating this man is how he became President.

No it's not.

 

[Lord Frieza]

I think the hidden narrative behind all this is really that Comey doesn't trust the GOP on the federal level at all. And that probably says something way bigger in the whole scope of things than anything else.

 

[Lord Frieza]

No vet is fool proof. There are ways for "new sources" with similar levels of access or credibility to easily deliver news to the media. It doesn't mean they are being given false info, not at all. It's just that the source is putting their spin on the information. We know Trump and his team is incompetent, but we can't keep assuming that they will always be so, or won't actually do some smart things once in a while. Underestimating this man is how he became President.

You're ignoring a lot of things, and assuming even more.

 

[TheOMan]

Yeah this is what people are glossing over the GOP has known for MONTHS that Russia was causing all this email bullshit and Gowdy and co kept bullshiting the country with email bullshit. THEY are part of the Russian operation the whole GOP is complicit here.

Yup, they should have led with this. The GOP *knew* this was rubbish, but used it anyway. They are definitely complicit in this.

 

[IchigoSharingan]

It's amazing how tangled up Russia's Fake News Brigade has made American politics.

As if our politics and denial of truths brigades weren't shit for themselves?

 

[Dyle]

Comey will go down as one of the great tragic figures in American history. He may have managed to destroy all public credibility of the intelligence community in a series of earnest, but foolish attempts to prove that the intelligence community was credibly non-partisan.

 

[BlazinSkatinAxel]

This is what real 5D chess looks like.

Exactly.

 

[iammeiam]

The thread title is really confusing.

I get that they didn't want the info to be leaked later and misused but the FBI held a lot of credibility, why not just outright dismiss the leak as fake should it come out and give no other details? I don't see how they figure they would need to give away critical info instead of just flatly denying its validity.

It's possible that the FBI just stating the document was fake would endanger their resources, because it would mean somebody involved in the actual faking told them which would narrow the pool of suspects. It's sort of like Trump's Israel Intel leak; he didn't say the word Israel, but some of the things he said would enable others to figure out who the leaker was.

If the FBI doesn't have an inside source, they can't really blanket discredit the whole thing, they'd have to investigate. Which would have been bad for Clinton.

 

[Lord Frieza]

Comey will go down as one of the great tragic figures in American history. He may have managed to destroy all public credibility of the intelligence community in a series of earnest, but foolish attempts to prove that the intelligence community was credibly non-partisan.

Eh, I wouldn't go that far, and it's not as if the IC has ever been held up as a shining beacon of trust and credibility. But I do think he'll be remembered as someone who was in a bad situation and, despite the best of intentions, may have made it worse.

 

[fuzzyset]

The thread title is really confusing.

I get that they didn't want the info to be leaked later and misused but the FBI held a lot of credibility, why not just outright dismiss the leak as fake should it come out and give no other details? I don't see how they figure they would need to give away critical info instead of just flatly denying its validity.

That's not what he was protecting. If they knew the information was fake, and said so, the Russians would know that the Americans knew the Russians were leaking fake information. Additionally, the Russians would likely find out how we knew (aka he didn't want to burn his sources and methods).

The last part is the biggest and most important aspect of the intelligence community (and closely kept secrets). The actual intel is largely unimportant in the scheme of things. It's the methods and people we use to gather the intel that's most important. It's why Trump's Israeli intel gaffe was so absurd and terrible. It wasn't that we knew laptops were being used as bombs. It's that we could know that.

I can guarantee you that the American intel community knows about so much nasty shit because of our sources and methods (moles, spies, satellites), but we have determined it not worth it to expose how we got this intel. If satellites pick up images of people moving small, tiny boxes of nuclear material, we can't just send in the SEALs to intercepts. We would be giving away that we can see/detect objects that are XYZ small in XYZ part of the world. We would lack plausible deniability.

 

[Vectorman]

Meanwhile the Orange One is still in the White House, scheming with the GOP to get rich and kill the poor. Man Mueller better get to work quick.

 

[B-Dubs]

I would LOVE to hear a JFK / Mr. X style monologue explaining this web that has been woven.

It'd take like three hours to explain all this shit.

Goddamn, Russia really fucked us all in the ass.

 

[Green Ninja]

This sounds like spin to make Comey come off as a hero when in fact he was an asshole.

 

[theWB27]

This sounds like spin to make Comey come off as a hero when in fact he was an asshole.

At first you wanted him in jail...and none of this sounds like it's making him a hero.

 

[DUFFMCWALIN]

This sounds like spin to make Comey come off as a hero when in fact he was an asshole.

Why?
Nice edit

 

[SJurgenson]

Am I missing something here?

I swear we knew this weeks ago... Didn't he say as much during one of his congressional testimonies -- that they had this doc, knew it was fake, but figured the prudent course would be to do what he did?

 

[Netherscourge]

Trump would have ran with the Russian stuff as fact, as would Fox News, Hannity, Alex Jones and all the other bullshit conservative media outlets.

 

[Shao Kahn Brewing a Stew]

BUT BUT BUT HER EMAAAIIIIIILLLLLLLLLLS!

 

[Dyle]

Eh, I wouldn't go that far, and it's not as if the IC has ever been held up as a shining beacon of trust and credibility. But I do think he'll be remembered as someone who was in a bad situation and, despite the best of intentions, may have made it worse.

Yeah, that's fair. I suppose a better phrase would be destroying all remaining public credibility of the IC, J. Edgar Hoover and the NSA leaks probably did more damage overall, Comey just delivered the final blow.

I'm hoping that Comey's professional life is a three act opera, act one being the Clinton investigation, act two being the Trump investigation, and act three being a grand redemption in testifying against Trump.

 

[BasicMath]

I don't understand.

Comey's a hero.

He chose the wellbeing of the agency and the country over protecting the integrity of the most powerful entity in politics. We were lucky to have him as FBI director during these times.

At least that's how I understand and see this.

 

[B-Dubs]

Comey's a hero.

He chose the wellbeing of the agency and the country over protecting the integrity of the most powerful entity in politics. We were lucky to have him as FBI director during these times.

At least that's how I understand and see this.

He had a big role in putting a Russian plant in the oval office.

 

[royalan]

Ok fine, but did he need to go in there and basically say "there is nothing to see here but she is terrible at everything"?

Exactly.

This doesn't exonerate Comey. If anything, it makes his actions look more partisan.

Comey didn't just declare the investigation over. He dragged Hillary through the mud and kept it in the news.

I mean, 2016 was no less dominated by Russian interference thanks to what he did.

 

[Anoregon]

Comey's a hero.

He chose the wellbeing of the agency and the country over protecting the integrity of the most powerful entity in politics. We were lucky to have him as FBI director during these times.

At least that's how I understand and see this.

I think he's neither a hero nor a villain. He may have honestly been trying to do what he thought was best, but he still ended up providing an extremely significant factor in the US electing the worst candidate in the country's history. Intentional or not, that's quite a huge fuckup.

 

[SRG01]

Comey's a hero.

He chose the wellbeing of the agency and the country over protecting the integrity of the most powerful entity in politics. We were lucky to have him as FBI director during these times.

At least that's how I understand and see this.

Essentially, he chose to protect an apparatus that will continue to serve for multiple administrations in the future over a single administration.

 

[captive]

I feel as though this is old news...

thats cause it is, we had a thread on this already
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1379649&highlight=comey+fake+intelligence

 

[B-Dubs]

Exactly.

This doesn't exonerate Comey. If anything, it makes his actions look more partisan.

Comey didn't just declare the investigation over. He dragged Hillary through the mud and kept it in the news.

I mean, 2016 was no less dominated by Russian interference thanks to what he did.

He pretty much played right into their hands and did what they would have wanted in trying to stop them from doing what they wanted.

 

[royalan]

He pretty much played right into their hands and did what they would have wanted in trying to stop them from doing what they wanted.

Yep.

Comey got played. He made up for it in the end. But 2017 doesn't change how much he got clowned in 2016.

Fuck what an embarrassment.

 

[Dyle]

thats cause it is, we had a thread on this already
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1379649&highlight=comey+fake+intelligence

No this is a fairly big update on that story. This CNN report says that Comey knew the info was fake, while the original WaPo article said that they believed it likely to be fake. Also this story confirms that Comey did not tell Congressional leaders in a confidential that this info was fake, which should raise a lot of eyebrows.

In classified sessions with members of Congress several months ago, Comey described those emails in the Russian claim and expressed his concern that this Russian information could "drop" and that would undermine the Clinton investigation and the Justice Department in general, according to one government official.

Still, Comey did not let on to lawmakers that there were doubts about the veracity of the intelligence, according to sources familiar with the briefings. It is unclear why Comey was not more forthcoming in a classified setting.

It's a fairly significant update that makes makes it clear how messed up the whole situation was.

 

[BrutishMrFish]

Exactly.

This doesn't exonerate Comey. If anything, it makes his actions look more partisan.

And he trusted Republicans in congress with a vaguely-worded letter but didn't trust Loretta Lynch enough to let her know that she was the subject of the fake document that was driving his actions.

 

[soundahfekz]

Can we have an election do-over yet?

Gotta be be out in the streets for that. We're too fucking complacent here

 

[royalan]

And he trusted Republicans in congress with a vaguely-worded letter but didn't trust Loretta Lynch enough to let her know that she was the subject of the fake document that was driving his actions.

Just trash

 

[TestOfTide]

Yep.

Comey got played. He made up for it in the end. But 2017 doesn't change how much he got clowned in 2016.

Fuck what an embarrassment.

He got played eventually, but in terms of making sure the investigation into Trump/Russia lasted longer than January he played it right.

 

[Fenderputty]

He pretty much played right into their hands and did what they would have wanted in trying to stop them from doing what they wanted.

Lose / Lose. One just would have been a bigger loss for the FBI.

 

[TheLostBigBoss]

Yep.

Comey got played. He made up for it in the end. But 2017 doesn't change how much he got clowned in 2016.

Fuck what an embarrassment.

Comey was forced to pick his poison.

He made the right choice.

He's the reason this investigation still exists and has validity.

 

[royalan]

Comey was forced to pick his poison.

He made the right choice.

He's the reason this investigation still exists and has validity.

Most polling indicates that Comey's actions had an impact on the election and substantially contributed to Hillary's loss.

So no, he didn't make the right choice.

Had he taken proper action, perhaps even informed the AG, the investigation would likely be continuing under a sane president.

Oh, and also, Comey would still have a job.

I mean, let's just look at events, what actually happened.

Did Comey's actions:

Stop the Russian propaganda machine? No.
Stop the FBI leaks? No.
Stop the congressional leaks? No.
Prevent Russia from successfully achieving their goal? No.
Protect the investigation? No. Trump's incompetence is doing that.

 

[TestOfTide]

Most polling indicates that Comey's actions had an impact on the election and substantially contributed to Hillary's loss.

So no, he didn't make the right choice.

Had he taken proper action, perhaps even informed the AG, the investigation would likely be continuing under a sane president.

Oh, and also, Comey would still have a job.

I mean, let's just look at events, what actually happened.

Did Comey's actions:

Stop the Russian propaganda machine? No.
Stop the FBI leaks? No.
Stop the congressional leaks? No.
Prevent Russia from successfully achieving their goal? No.
Protect the investigation? No. Trump's incompetence is doing that.

And what if Comey didn't send the letter and due to a combination of FBI leaks and other factors Trump STILL won?

Comey did what he did because he had to cover for the possibility of Trump winning.

 

[ICO_SotC]

Jesus. What a convoluted mess.

I want to know who Comey thought was going to push Russian propaganda onto the public to damage Hillary Clinton.

I would love to think there's a reason Chaffetz is getting out of town early, and trying to discredit Comey on the way out.