Truer words, as above, have not recently been written. It’s all about James Comey.

And the testimony of FBI Director James Comey on Wednesday before the US Senate Judiciary Committee on FBI Oversight only serves to underline and prove one thing: Mr Comey needs to be forced to resign, and immediately.

Certainly Hillary Clinton thinks so. It was Comey and the Russians who did her in despite saying she is taking “absolute personal full responsibility” for her loss. Uh, no. She doesn’t take full responsibility. She spoke to CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday.

“If the election had been on October 27, I would be your president,” she told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour at a Women for Women International event in New York.

“I take absolute personal responsibility. I was the candidate, I was the person who was on the ballot. I am very aware of the challenges, the problems, the shortfalls that we had,” Clinton said, before adding that she was “on the way to winning until a combination of Jim Comey’s letter on October 28 and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me and got scared off.”

This is the same Hillary Clinton who was enraged that the election wasn’t simply handed over to her as required by us underlings, proles. commoners, serfs and unwashed rabble.

[It’s interesting to note that Hillary Clinton is writing a book about her loss, Huma Abedin is writing a book and Barack Hussein Obama is making $400,000 speeches to Wall Street.]

The very next day following Clinton’s fuzzy softball interview, Director Comey’s testimony in the Senate was jam-gepacked with bursting volumes of self-serving and contradictory statements. (The full testimony can be read here. Full video is here.) Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley originally called the Wednesday oversight hearing of the FBI to examine what the agency knows about a 2015 terrorist attack in Garland, Texas. Things got a bit off-topic, however.

To what am I referring? From Breitbart.com:

Comey: Anthony Weiner Received Classified Clinton Emails

by Kristina Wong

FBI Director James Comey hit back Wednesday against Democratic criticism of his decision to reopen the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails 11 days before the 2016 election.

He said although it made him “mildly nauseous” to think he could have had some impact on the election, he believes he did the right thing and to this day, would not change his mind.

In explaining his decision to reopen the investigation, he said investigators found metadata on the seized laptop of Anthony Weiner — top Clinton aide Huma Abedin’s husband — that showed there were “thousands” of Clinton’s emails on the device, including classified information.

Investigators believed the emails could include emails missing from her first three months as secretary of state.

Comey said after repeatedly telling members of Congress that the FBI had concluded its investigation into Clinton, the only right thing to do was to let Congress know the case was reopened.

“I could see two doors and they were both actions. One was labeled ‘speak,’ the other was labeled ‘conceal,’” he said.

But wait. Was classified information really involved in any of those emails?

He said Abedin forwarded “hundreds of thousands” of emails to Weiner, 40,000 of which they reviewed. Three thousand of those were work-related, and 12 of them contained classified information, he said.

But he said Abedin and Weiner were not charged with any wrongdoing since investigators did not find a general sense of criminal intent — a decision that Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) scoffed at.

The hearing conducted on Wednesday featured Senator Diane Feinstein asking a question that, in retrospect, she wished she never touched.

She received a lot more information, damning information, than she wanted. She opened the door and FBI Director James Comey walked right through it. I suspect she was hoping Comey would simply reply that the information was classified. Sorry, senator. Feinstein was just pissed, regarding 702 data**, that her Demorat ox got gored.

But what really happened here? Again, just like July of 2016, Comey makes an argument for prosecution — first, against Hillary Clinton now, here, against Huma Abedin — and then does nothing about it. How did Weiner come to be in possession of classified information? Huma Abedin sent it to him. This is a violation of 18 USC 793 — Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information, to wit:

(f) Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer—

Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

As I wrote in July of last year regarding Director Comey’s decision to refuse sending the Hillary Clinton case on to DOJ:

To me it is quite clear that FBI Director James Comey, about whose probity I wrote quite a number of times on the blog, has dishonored his law enforcement oath, showing that he has no fidelity, no bravery and no integrity with regard to his decision to not recommend prosecution of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

But in today’s hearing with Trey Gowdy and Jason Chaffetz as documented at Politico, James Comey revealed his flawed and craven, cowardly political thinking when one is familiar with law enforcement prosecutorial thresholds as I am.

Director Comey determined a manner in which to weasel his way out of recommending the prosecution of Clinton.  At Thursday’s hearing he went out of his way — again, just like Wednesday — to make his own case and then fall back on a position/decision that isn’t his to make.

But the most insightful part has arrived.  Comey outs himself:

Chaffetz then asked whether it was that he was just not able to prosecute it or that Clinton broke the law.

“Well, I don’t want to give an overly lawyerly answer,” Comey said. “The question I always look at is there evidence that would establish beyond a reasonable doubt that somebody engaged in conduct that violated a criminal statute, and my judgment here is there is not. “

And this is how James Comey attempts to rationalize his decision.  He states he does not believe his case established guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

NEWSFLASH: It is not UP to YOU, Director Comey, to assemble a case that yields a determination of “beyond a reasonable doubt.”  That threshold is up to the DOJ or more pointedly a Grand Jury, not you or your organization.  All you need to compile a case for submission is “probable cause.”  That’s what real cops and real DAs in America do.  Their jobs.  They stay in their lanes and do their jobs.

As noted about Comey’s wrong-headed decision to give a pass to Hillary Clinton regarding the classified information on her server and in her emails, there are crimes of specific intent and general intent. Comey insists he must have specific intent before forwarding a case to DOJ. That’s wrong. There are sections, as above, that demand no such thing. Watch:

“She had no sense that what she was doing was a violation of the law.” Really, Mr Comey? “We couldn’t prove any sort of criminal intent.” You might try reading the law, Mr Comey. Federal law. The law you’re tasked with following and upholding.

Senator Ted Cruz had questions.

The fact patterns in Hillary Clinton’s case and Huma Abedin’s case do violate federal law as indicated by Senator Cruz above and common sense.

Director Comey’s job is not to be the attorney, but to be the compiler, and assembler of cases and, then, submitting a case to the Department of Justice. He essentially has and is usurping the function of prosecutors by withholding cases from the DOJ.

Tucker Carlson, below, interviews Democrat Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio and, more pointedly, former US Attorney Jim Digenova. Listen to Digenova’s clear and cogent case against FBI Director James Comey.

On Wednesday, for good measure, Director Comey decided to throw former US Attorney General Loretta Lynch under the bus — deservedly but quite willingly.

Now there is information from RightScoop.com, announced by Catherine Herridge of Fox News:

REVEALED: FBI found email that Lynch would do everything she could to protect Hillary from CRIMINAL CHARGES

Fox News reporter Catherine Herridge says this is one of the biggest headlines out of the hearing today with the FBI director, pointing out that the FBI had found an email was obtained by Russian hackers that indicated that former DOJ hack Loretta Lynch would do everything she could to protect Hillary from prosecution:

 

This was the story from Wednesday. And who covered it? Anyone but Fox?

Note how Director Comey refuses to answer. The fix was in. Comey is a disreputable political hack and has proven himself time and again to be so.

FBI Director James Comey must go. He is too self-centered, too much the political animal and, frankly, too narcissistic to continue in his current position. He insists he is apolitical but every movement he makes and statement he gives proves otherwise.

It’s all about James Comey.

BZ

NOTE:

** 702 data, under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978:

Section 702 permits the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence to jointly authorize targeting of persons reasonably believed to be located outside the United States, but is limited to targeting non-U.S. persons. Once authorized, such acquisitions may last for periods of up to one year.

Under subsection 702(b) of the FISA Amendments Act, such an acquisition is also subject to several limitations. Specifically, an acquisition:

• May not intentionally target any person known at the time of acquisition to be located in the United States;
• May not intentionally target a person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States if the purpose of such acquisition is to target a particular, known person reasonably believed to be in the United States;
• May not intentionally target a U.S. person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States;
• May not intentionally acquire any communication as to which the sender and all intended recipients are known at the time of the acquisition to be located in the United States;
• Must be conducted in a manner consistent with the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.^[10]