Comey’s conundrum

[volsrock]

Mr. Smartypants may have outsmarted himself. James Comey has painted himself into a corner by indirectly leaking a memorandum to the New York Times (a person who read the memorandum shared excerpts from it to reporter Michael Schmitt) and may even have placed himself in legal jeopardy. Gregg Jarrett of Fox News, a former defense attorney, explains:




Under the law, Comey is required to immediately inform the Department of Justice of any attempt to obstruct justice by any person, even the President of the United States. Failure to do so would result in criminal charges against Comey. (18 USC 4 and 28 USC 1361) He would also, upon sufficient proof, lose his license to practice law.

So, if Comey believed Trump attempted to obstruct justice, did he comply with the law by reporting it to the DOJ? If not, it calls into question whether the events occurred as the Times reported it.

Obstruction requires what's called "specific intent" to interfere with a criminal case. If Comey concluded, however, that Trump's language was vague, ambiguous or elliptical, then he has no duty under the law to report it because it does not rise to the level of specific intent. Thus, no crime.

There is no evidence Comey ever alerted officials at the Justice Department, as he is duty-bound to do. Surely if he had, that incriminating information would have made its way to the public either by an indictment or, more likely, an investigation that could hardly be kept confidential in the intervening months.

Blog: Comey?s conundrum

 

[ttwtt78640]

Mr. Smartypants may have outsmarted himself. James Comey has painted himself into a corner by indirectly leaking a memorandum to the New York Times (a person who read the memorandum shared excerpts from it to reporter Michael Schmitt) and may even have placed himself in legal jeopardy. Gregg Jarrett of Fox News, a former defense attorney, explains:




Under the law, Comey is required to immediately inform the Department of Justice of any attempt to obstruct justice by any person, even the President of the United States. Failure to do so would result in criminal charges against Comey. (18 USC 4 and 28 USC 1361) He would also, upon sufficient proof, lose his license to practice law.

So, if Comey believed Trump attempted to obstruct justice, did he comply with the law by reporting it to the DOJ? If not, it calls into question whether the events occurred as the Times reported it.

Obstruction requires what's called "specific intent" to interfere with a criminal case. If Comey concluded, however, that Trump's language was vague, ambiguous or elliptical, then he has no duty under the law to report it because it does not rise to the level of specific intent. Thus, no crime.

There is no evidence Comey ever alerted officials at the Justice Department, as he is duty-bound to do. Surely if he had, that incriminating information would have made its way to the public either by an indictment or, more likely, an investigation that could hardly be kept confidential in the intervening months.

Blog: Comey?s conundrum

Comey has shown that he has little, if any, understanding of "intent". It is hard for me to accept that Hillary's home server was established or used without intent when she clearly stated that its purpose (intent?) was to be more convenient than the .gov server system used by (all?) others and publicly admitted that she "used bad judgement" (made a poor intentional decision?) to have done so. To assert that it was unintentional to establish that server and to use it for official business likely to include classified data is simply not credible.

 

[Paperview]

Mr. Smartypants may have outsmarted himself. James Comey has painted himself into a corner by indirectly leaking a memorandum to the New York Times (a person who read the memorandum shared excerpts from it to reporter Michael Schmitt) and may even have placed himself in legal jeopardy. Gregg Jarrett of Fox News, a former defense attorney, explains:




Under the law, Comey is required to immediately inform the Department of Justice of any attempt to obstruct justice by any person, even the President of the United States. Failure to do so would result in criminal charges against Comey. (18 USC 4 and 28 USC 1361) He would also, upon sufficient proof, lose his license to practice law.

So, if Comey believed Trump attempted to obstruct justice, did he comply with the law by reporting it to the DOJ? If not, it calls into question whether the events occurred as the Times reported it.

Obstruction requires what's called "specific intent" to interfere with a criminal case. If Comey concluded, however, that Trump's language was vague, ambiguous or elliptical, then he has no duty under the law to report it because it does not rise to the level of specific intent. Thus, no crime.

There is no evidence Comey ever alerted officials at the Justice Department, as he is duty-bound to do. Surely if he had, that incriminating information would have made its way to the public either by an indictment or, more likely, an investigation that could hardly be kept confidential in the intervening months.

Blog: Comey?s conundrum

Aw geeze. *this* again.

<smh>

 

[Paperview]

Chow down:

'Total nonsense': Legal experts debunk 'uninformed' theory that Comey could be subject to legal jeopardy for withholding memo

<snip>"Speaking to Business Insider, several legal experts criticized this assertion as something that couldn't be further from the truth.

"Total nonsense," Alan Dershowitz, a prolific attorney and professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, told Business Insider of the conservative theories.

Robert Chesney, a law professor at the University of Texas School of Law and a founding editor of Lawfare, told Business Insider in an email "that the argument is completely uninformed" because "misprision of felony requires an affirmative act of concealment (not just non-reporting) and because in this case, the person said to know of the crime is himself the leader of the agency to whom such agency should be given."

Chesney wrote a debunking of the theory on Lawfare.

"And there's no law, let alone a criminal law, requiring the FBI director to specifically inform others in the Justice Department of investigative leads," he continued. "Really, it's quite silly."

If the memo is a real and an accurate portrayal of Comey's February conversation with Trump — in which the president reportedly expressed to Comey that he hoped the FBI director could "let go" of the investigation into Flynn because he was a "good" person — it is but one piece of the puzzle in terms of a potential obstruction of justice charge, not the full thing.

Legal experts say Comey withholding Trump memo is legally sound - Business Insider

 

[Paperview]

No, Jim Comey Is Not In Legal Jeopardy

<snip>
"There are two obvious reasons why this statute does not apply to Comey's situation.


First, note the word "concealment." This is a stand-alone element of the offense, not just a superfluous verbal flourish restating the point that one must report. Just look at any federal pattern jury instruction: affirmative steps to conceal are required, not just the fact of failing to report the crime. <snip>

There is no basis for claiming that Jim Comey took affirmative steps to conceal any alleged obstruction by Donald Trump. To argue that Comey somehow affirmatively concealed something by taking care with who got to see his memo entirely collapses this distinction, and would extend liability for misprision to just about every criminal investigator and prosecutor in this country (given how routine it is for both investigators and prosecutors to create but limit circulation of documents with evidentiary content in this sense).

Second, and more fundamentally, Jarrett's op-ed implies that the obligation to report runs specifically to Justice Department prosecutors. That's not what the statute says, however, and of course the more obvious recipients for any such notifications would be...the FBI. Jim Comey was, of course, FBI Director at all relevant times, and deeply engaged in supervision of existing, related criminal (and probably also counterintelligence) investigations.

It's more than a stretch to suggest that the misprision statute somehow creates....<snip>


Third..."

https://lawfareblog.com/no-jim-comey-not-legal-jeopardy

 

[Beaudreaux]

Comey has shown that he has little, if any, understanding of "intent". It is hard for me to accept that Hillary's home server was established or used without intent when she clearly stated that its purpose (intent?) was to be more convenient than the .gov server system used by (all?) others and publicly admitted that she "used bad judgement" (made a poor intentional decision?) to have done so. To assert that it was unintentional to establish that server and to use it for official business likely to include classified data is simply not credible.

Agreed. Which reflects upon his choice in this instance to not report any potential interference attempt by Trump. Trump may have, or may not have, attempted to interfere with the investigation. One thing, however, is more and more obvious - we cannot use Comey's actions, inaction, or opinion regarding what Trump may have said to him as a gauge. I trust Comey to write down what factually occurred during his meetings or conversations with Trump. I don't, however, trust his judgment regarding whether there was any 'intent.'

 

[volsrock]

 

[Paperview]

Info Wars.



Good lord.

 

[Chomsky]

It seems to me regardless of Comey's abrogation to duty or not, his eyewitness testimony and contemporaneous notes will remain largely intact.