“It is essential that we find new leadership for the FBI that restores public trust and confidence in its vital law enforcement mission,” Mr. Trump wrote in a letter to Mr. Comey.
“The FBI is unlikely to regain public and congressional trust until it has a director who understands the gravity of the mistakes and pledges never to repeat them,” he wrote. “Having refused to admit his errors, the director cannot be expected to implement the necessary corrective actions.”
Ballhaus, Rebecca. “Trump Fires FBI Director Comey.” The Wall Street Journal, A1, A4, May 10, 2017.
Comey’s errors?
Publicly commenting after close of investigation on Clinton’s e-mails, an act with which then candidate Trump and later President Trump appeared to have had no issue.
That’s one error.
That’s it.
One possible other, not cited as an error, might be Comey’s heading up the investigation into possible collusion between Trump’s 2016 campaign effort and Moscow.
The format of Trump’s ire and its delivery appears to BackChannels that of j’accuse, the Jacobin’s pointing the finger at all suspected of political heresy.
Regarding the President’s claim of having had no business with Russia — it might be true; however, the query may be also complicated by Russia’s feudal gaming over time plus the business class in which he resides.
At this point, the reader may wish to keep in mind Moscow’s duplicitous and manipulative feudal character and its kleptocratic ends:
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/03/11/reflexive-control-process-allahu-akbar-terrorism-new-nationalism-neo-feudalism/
Motivation?
Feudal wealth; feudal power; absolute and above and beyond questioning — if not rule by divine right, then by way of most worldly thuggery.
Reminder: Flynn
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/04/donald-trump-2016-russia-today-rt-kremlin-media-vladimir-putin-213833 – 5-6/2016:
I saw the relation with Russia as necessary to the U.S., for the interests of the U.S. We worked very closely with them on the Sochi Olympics. We were working closely with them on the Iranian nuclear deal. We beat Hitler because of our relationship with the Russians, so anybody that looks on it as anything but a relationship that’s required for mutual supporting interests, including ISIS, … that’s really where I’m at with Russia. We have a problem with radical Islamism and I actually think that we could work together with them against this enemy. They have a worse problem than we do.
Flynn’s statement sounds true enough on the surface, but place it beside this analysis of ISIL and it’s role in the east v west, feudal v modern contest:
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/04/09/ftac-reprise-how-isil-serves-moscow-damascus-and-tehran/
BackChannels thesis: Moscow, Damascus, and Tehran ditched a mild revolutionary opposition in favor of the al-Qaeda type organizations, so as to produce for themselves and the west a political spectacle, “Assad v The Terrorists”, certain to aggrandize themselves while blackmailing and goading the west in the direction of complicity with — or weakness in the face of — each their own totalitarian dictatorships and kleptocracies.
General Michael T. Flynn, proving less than one-hundred percent honest with Vice President Pence in relation to his Moscow-related experience got himself fired in much the same brusque manner as now former FBI Director Comey.
Here’s a smattering of related URLs, but the main thing here is to remind of Flynn’s connection to Trump’s denial of his initial team having had nothing to do with Russia.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/08/15/trump-adviser-michael-t-flynn-on-his-dinner-with-putin-and-why-russia-today-is-just-like-cnn/
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-michael-flynn-russia-money-20170316-story.html – 3/16/2017
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/russians-paid-mike-flynn-45k-moscow-speech-documents-show-n734506 – 3/16/2017
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/31/michael-flynn-new-evidence-spy-chiefs-had-concerns-about-russian-ties – 3/31/2016
Reminder: Manafort
The header alone should operate like Proust’s fabled taste of Madeleine, for Manafort falls into place with Yanukovych, Putin’s puppet deposed by cause of his own corruption in Ukraine, and then Sergei Millian — http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/01/donald-trump-russia-sergei-millian (1/19/2017), Konstantin Kilimnik — http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/trump-russia-manafort-235850 – 3/8/2017 – and on to the dreaded “Steele Dossier”, which has done Trump’s reputation some damage while being simultaneously dismissed for appearing itself beyond corroboration — http://dailycaller.com/2017/05/08/comey-intel-community-could-not-corroborate-trump-dossier/ – 5/8/2017.
Still, “kompromat” aside, there’s Manafort — and then question of how the leading consultant to the world’s bloodiest dictators got on to Trump’s campaign team in the first place.
One may leave that question in the shadows because that’s where it’s bound to live given the silence prized by political mafia and political consultants alike. However, one may take note of this passage in the Politico article:
Manafort stressed that his work in Ukraine was intended to steer Yanukovych towards more pro-Western policies and more engagement with the European Union. And Kilimnik told POLITICO that “one thing that was grossly under-reported to date is the effort that Paul Manafort undertook to help Ukrainian leaders defend Ukraine’s interests and move the country towards [a European Union] Free Trade Agreement.”
Yet Yanukovych in 2013 backed away from a commitment to that agreement, and fled Ukraine for Russia under the protection of Russian President Vladimir Putin amid widespread protests over government corruption.
We’re a suspicious lot, we Americans, a condition amplified always by missing datum.
At the same time, we have been also subject to traditional KGB “Active Measures”, i.e., efforts to massively disinform and misguide EU / NATO constituencies, and it may take both an army of responsible editor-readers and plain curious and independent Americans to get a true measure on states of affairs.
Here’s the problem:
Manafort could be the “good guy”, a guy making great money transitioning the world’s worst leaders toward western and conscionable standards.
How would BackChannels or the public know?
It seems in the President Trump “Trust Me” stories — on the economy, foreign affairs, immigration — that suspect alleys dead-end in political space.
It also seems to BackChannels that former FBI director Comey’s tenure has been particularly scrupulous as regards the investigator’s legal permit to share information with the public. As much appeared in play before the public last month during the “House hearing on Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election.” The same may be shared in closed sessions with select elected public representatives: is the public to trust whom it has elected to oversight?
The public has no choice beyond what it has with its vote, and it either elects its officials for their integrity or it fails and suffers endless doubts.
The leftward Mother Jones has gone full tilt on news of Comey’s firing.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/05/donald-trump-james-comey-firing-watergate-russia-1 :
Not since Watergate.
How else can one start an article about President Donald Trump summarily firing FBI chief James Comey?
. . . This is reminiscent of when President Richard Nixon dismissed Archibald Cox, the special Watergate prosecutor who was getting too close to the truth. Nixon canned Cox rather than cooperating with his investigation.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/05/donald-trump-firing-james-comey-investigation-fbi-russia (by David Corn, May 10, 2017):
Last month, Comey appeared before the House intelligence committee, and his testimony put Trump in a bad spot. Comey noted that the FBI had no information to support Trump’s baseless charge that President Barack Obama had wiretapped Trump before the election. He was practically calling Trump a nut or a liar. Then Comey, in an unprecedented move, revealed that the FBI had been investigating interactions between Trump associates and Russia since last July. It was a stunning moment: the FBI chief disclosing his bureau was running an investigation that could lead to his boss, the president. All of this showed the Trump-Russia scandal was still on fire.
If Trump fired Comey to impede the Russia investigation, he possibly engaged in obstruction of justice. That is a crime. That is a case for impeachment.
Naturally, Trump was enraged. He has dismissed the Russia story as fake news and a hoax. Comey said it was nothing but.
What don’t we know?
In an Orwellian society, the matter would end with authoritarian contempt, Orwell’s communist-socialist totalitarian “boot in the face”, a world in which the government’s monopoly on information and continuous diversion and suppression of criticism and truth were so notorious that interpreted through the work of the socialist George Orwell — Eric Arthur Blair — the same has left its stamp indelible on the informed western conscience.
http://www.george-orwell.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Orwell_Matters
President Trump’s imperious and sudden decapitation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation smacks of the feudal approach to criticism and threat to authority. Instead of allowing James Comey and his organization to come up empty handed, which result may have required only the President’s inaction, President Trump will now forever have appeared to have lashed out at someone he perceived as an actor and source intending to undermine this authority.
MOSCOW (AP) — He visited imperial palaces and construction sites. He presided at a Miss Universe pageant. He hobnobbed with city officials at gala functions and seemed to particularly enjoy dining on Russian sausage.
But Donald Trump did not strike any real estate deals here.
The New York real estate tycoon has his name on hotels, resorts and other properties from South Korea to Turkey to Panama, but none in Russia, though he repeatedly said he wanted to build a Trump tower in Moscow and discussed various deals in three visits dating back to 1987.
Vasilyeva, Nataliya. “Russian real estate deals never materialized for Trump.” AP, March 4, 2017.
One more excerpt, this from Reuters:
A Reuters review found that at least 63 individuals with Russian passports or addresses have bought at least $98.4 million worth of property in seven Trump-branded luxury towers in southern Florida.
Layne, Nathan, Ned Parker, Svetlana Reiter, Stephen Grey, Ryan McNeill. “Russian elite invested nearly $100 million in Trump buildings.” Reuters, March 17, 2017:
The Reuters review of investors from Russia in Trump’s Florida condominium buildings found no suggestion of wrongdoing by President Trump or his real estate organization. And none of the buyers appear to be from Putin’s inner circle.
Addendum – Odd ‘n’ Ends
http://www.salon.com/2017/05/10/russia-is-trolling-the-u-s-over-james-comeys-firing-accusations-of-trumps-russian-connections/ 5/10/2017.
BackChannels 