Tuesday, November 1, 2016

Is this Clinton story becoming a Comey story?

I grabbed this screen capture from the Washington Post on Saturday, immediately after the announcement.


Comey was catching considerable heat even before this broke...

From CNBC:

FBI Director James Comey argued privately that it was too close to Election Day for the United States government to name Russia as meddling in the U.S. election and ultimately ensured that the FBI's name was not on the document that the U.S. government put out, a former bureau official tells CNBC.

The official said some government insiders are perplexed as to why Comey would have election timing concerns with the Russian disclosure but not with the Huma Abedin email discovery disclosure he made Friday.

Here's Marshall with some more background:

Two stories were published today alleging or suggesting actual covert communication between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign and an effort to use Trump to advance Russian interests in the United States. One of these stories is about suspicious communication between a Trump controlled email server and Russia. The second story is much more specific in its accusation. According to David Corn, who is an experienced national security and intelligence reporter, a retired spy from a western country who now works for an American security contractor has provided the FBI with evidence suggesting that "the Russian government has for years tried to co-opt and assist Trump." Corn further reports that this retired spy found "troubling information indicating connections between Trump and the Russian government. According to his sources, he says, 'there was an established exchange of information between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin of mutual benefit.'"

The retired spy, who remains anonymous, says he's provided his evidence to the FBI and they have requested additional information from him about his sources, findings, etc. Corn knows how to do this kind of reporting. He has spoken to a US intelligence official who says this retired spy has provided credible and valuable intelligence to the US government in the past. He is considered reliable. Corn's reporting gives me a high level of confidence this retired spy is not a crank. That doesn't mean he's right or even that he's not pursuing some unknown agenda.
...

Think of it this way.

If Trump is advocating for Russia in the US political arena (he is), and Russia is conducting an espionage and disruption campaign on Trump's behalf in the US political area (highly likely), do I need to know if they're actually talking to each other while both these things are happening? I'm not sure I do.

Isn't this a much bigger deal than it has been made out to be?


No comments:

Post a Comment