James Comey, the former FBI director who let Hillary Clinton off the hook for losing thousands of state secrets, is now under investigation for lying to President Trump.
Several times during Comey’s reign as the head of the FBI, Comey repeatedly told Trump that there was no FBI investigation of him. But that’s been outed as a lie.
Writing for Real Clear Investigations (RCI) on the story, Paul Sperry writes, “Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz will file a report with evidence that Comey mislead the president. Even as he assured Trump that he was not a target, the former FBI director was secretly building a conspiracy case against the president, while acting as an investigative agent.”
Two U.S. officials who are familiar with Horowitz’s report say that Comey was running a secret operation against the President. They say that this covert operation began with a “defensive briefing” just days after Trump’s inauguration.
Sources within RCI report that Horowitz has looked over many text messages between former FBI leadership and others which seemingly suggests Comey was surveilling the President on behalf of Trump’s political rivals during their meeting in January of 2017 in New York.
Comey even had an FBI agent working in the White House, without Trump’s knowledge. This agent reported on the activities of the President and his aides.
RCI writes, “The agent, Anthony Ferrante, specialized in cybercrime and left the White House at the same time, Comey was fired and joined a security firm, where he contracted with BuzzFeed to lead their efforts to verify the Steele document, in connection with a defamation lawsuit.”
Horowitz and his staff examined hundreds of thousands of documents and conducted more than a hundred interviews. These included sit down talks with Comey and other employees, former and current, at the DOJ and FBI.
Horowitz told RCI, “The period covering Comey’s activities ran from early January 2017 to early May 2017, when Comey was fired and his deputy Andrew McCabe, as the acting FBI director, formally opened full counterintelligence and obstruction investigations of the president.”
Real Clear Investigations noted that Lisa Page, who was having an affair with her fellow Trump hating FBI agent Peter Strzok, was a lawyer who worked directly with McCabe on his investigation of President Trump. Page was called to testify before the Congress and the House Judiciary Committee on Comey and other FBI leaders handling of the investigation into the President.
While under oath Page walked back her earlier claim that Comey and McCabe had NOT talked about conducting an obstruction case against Trump prior to Comey’s firing in May of 2017. RCI wrote, “Initially, denied it, swearing, ‘Obstruction of justice was not a topic of conversation during the time frame you have described.’ But then, after conferring with her FBI-assigned lawyer, she announced, ‘I need to take back my prior statement.’ Page then conceded that there could have been discussions about possible criminal activity involving the president.”
Sperry makes a point of the fact that Comey was not working alone in his attempts to find dirt on Trump. He notes that Comey’s meeting with Trump took place on the day after Comey met with Obama and Biden in the White House, “[…] to discuss how to brief Trump — a meeting attended by National Security Adviser Susan Rice, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and National Intelligence Director James Clapper, who would soon go to work for CNN,” according to RCI.
In Comey’s book, “A Higher Loyalty,” he claims that he did not have a counterintelligence file on Trump. However, according to the National Review columnist and former federal prosecutor, Andrew McCarthy- the fact that Trump’s name was not on the file does not mean that he was not under investigation.
McCarthy writes, “They were hoping to surveil him, and they were trying to make a case on him. The real reason Comey did not want to repeat the assurances he made to Trump privately is they were misleading. The FBI strung Trump along, telling him he was not a suspect while structuring the investigation in such a way that Trump was the main subject.”
It’s a point that could be difficult to prosecute. But, what the professionals are telling us is that Comey had a file that was deceptively labeled and that it and the investigation it served were clearly designed to target the President. At the same time as this secret Trump file was being built up- Comey was actively telling the President that there was no investigation.
