Thursday, June 8 was the date of former FBI Director James Comey’s hearing in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee. For those who don’t have time to sit through hours of intensive questioning, here is what to take away from the debacle.
- Obama’s Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, asked Comey to refer to Hillary Clinton’s email scandal as a “matter,” not an investigation, while in public. That doesn’t bode well for Hillary’s public image and gives Bernie Sanders fans another reason to disregard the former presidential candidate. However, Comey’s experiences with Trump are even more damning.
- James Comey stated that he wrote memos after meeting with Trump because he thought the president might try to lie about those meetings in the future. Not only was he probably right, but such a stark assessment of the president’s honesty coming from a former FBI director is troubling.
- Actually, Comey called Trump a liar several times while under oath. He also said that rumors of chaos within the FBI, started by Trump himself, were “lies. Plain and simple.” This means that the POTUS attempted to discredit Comey and other U.S. intelligence officials by saying they were bad at their jobs, to put things simply. For the president to act so irresponsibly is stunning.
- Comey disagreed with Vice President Mike Pence’s insistence that Pence was unaware of Michael Flynn’s ties to Russia. He stated that former Attorney General Sally Yates told him that Pence knew about Flynn’s suspicious activities. Once again, Comey reinforced the general theme of the last few months in American politics: Trump’s administration is lying to us.
- Comey firmly believes that Russia interfered with the 2016 presidential election, and he thinks the American people need to know that. “That’s about as un-fake news as you can possibly get,” Comey stated, after describing the network of attempted Russian cyber attacks that occurred as early as 2015 and targeted hundreds of government officials. The most famous of these attacks, of course, is the leaking of documents through the website WikiLeaks.
In addition to Trump’s lies, Comey’s testimony gave us a picture of his arrogance: not only does Trump not care about the results of the Russian investigation, he doesn’t seem to know right from wrong. Trump had no clue that asking Comey to back off on the investigation into Michael Flynn would backfire, a fact that Republican congressmen seemed to either ignore or pin on Comey himself.
One thing’s for sure: the American people will end today with significantly more insight into the mind and actions of our 45th president. We can only hope James Comey’s testimony brings Trump one step closer to impeachment.
