Comments (32)

billyjoe wrote on April 26, 2007 12:00 PM:

"I have no idea whether or not 2006 will be the year the power of the despots in this country will be checked, but if it happens it will be due to people like James Comey who after only three weeks on the job as the number two man in the Justice Department went to John Ashcroft in December of 2003 and told him he had to recuse himself from the CIA leak investigation."

http://firedoglake.blogspot.com/2005_12_25_archive.html

Rusty wrote on April 26, 2007 12:04 PM:

Appearently, he didn't care enough to disclose the corruption (if he did know about it). Are there any legit people left in the DOJ senior management?

code: turn - hopefully turn to the good fight.

parrot wrote on April 26, 2007 12:04 PM:

Maybe they can debrief Comey on some other matters having to do with possible violations of the law and basic ethical standards while they're at it...

bobh wrote on April 26, 2007 12:13 PM:

By The Associated Press Wed Apr 25, 7:05 PM ET

Current and former White House officials who used political e-mail accounts provided by the
Republican National Committee. The RNC provided the list Wednesday to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
ADVERTISEMENT

___

Dan Bartlett, counselor to
President Bush

Trey Best, associate director Office of Political Affairs

Mike Britt, associate director Office of Political Affairs

Jane Cherry, associate director Office of Political Affairs

Raul Damas, former associate director Office of Political Affairs

Melissa Danforth, former associate director Office of Strategic Initiatives

Paris Dennard, executive assistant Office of Political Affairs

Michael Ellis, former associate director Office of Strategic Initiatives

Jonathan Felts, former associate director Office of Political Affairs who became assistant to Vice President
Dick Cheney for political affairs

B.J. Goergen, former executive assistant to Karl Rove who later joined the State Department's office of public diplomacy

Israel Hernandez, former assistant to Rove who later became assistant secretary of commerce

Taylor Hughes, executive assistant and special projects coordinator to Rove

Jason Huntsberry, former associate director Office of Political Affairs

Barry Jackson, deputy to Rove

Scott Jennings, deputy director of political affairs

Korinne Kubena, associate director Office of Political Affairs

Cathie Martin, deputy director of communications for policy and planning

Anita McBride, chief of staff for the first lady

Lauren McBrien, former special assistant to the director of political affairs for Cheney

Mindy McLaughlin, associate director of scheduling

Mel Raines, former assistant to Cheney for political affairs

Susan Ralston, former assistant to Rove

Cliff Rosenberger, staff assistant Office of Political Affairs

Karl Rove, deputy chief of staff and senior adviser to the president

Matt Schlapp, former director of political affairs

Jon Seaton, former associate director Office of Political Affairs

Scott Sforza, deputy director of communications for production

Nick Sinatra, associate director Office of Political Affairs

Brad Smith, executive assistant Office of Political Affairs

Steven Soper, former associate director Office of Political Affairs

Jessica Swineheart, former executive assistant Office of Political Affairs

Sara Taylor, director of political affairs

Nicholas Thompson, associate director Office of Strategic Initiatives

Jocelyn Webster, former staff assistant Office of Political Affairs

Pete Wehner, director of Office of Strategic Initiatives

Emily Willeford, director of Rove's office

OPA intern (used by various interns)

___

On the Net:

RNC letter to Waxman's committee: http://tinyurl.com/2e98bx

regular lurker wrote on April 26, 2007 12:15 PM:

Gonzales is making Ashcroft look better and better.

SPENCER ADAMS wrote on April 26, 2007 12:17 PM:

James Comey was the guy who appointed Fitz as the Special Prosecutor while Ashcroft was in the hospital; he resigned shortly after; I would love to hear more about the pressures he faced then.

John in Erie wrote on April 26, 2007 12:28 PM:

"... and the wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round"

obsessed wrote on April 26, 2007 12:39 PM:

"...round and round, off and off"

Comey enjoys folk hero status in all provinces of Plamelandia. Let's hope he lives up to his advance press.

benjoya wrote on April 26, 2007 12:44 PM:

comey also refused to sign off on warantless wiretapping, sending WH counsel abu to the aforementioned hospitalized AG LetTheEagleSoar. could be an interesting hearing.

Sholom wrote on April 26, 2007 12:44 PM:

Comey was also the guy, who when Ashcroft was in the hospital, refused to re-authorize some of the NSA spying stuff (And then they went to Ashcroft in the hospital).

And Comey ended up protecting Fitzgerald by appointing Margolis to oversee Fitz, as Comey was resigning.

John in Erie wrote on April 26, 2007 12:46 PM:

If he's scheduled to come in, why the subpoena authorization? Do they expect him to fight it?

Rusty wrote on April 26, 2007 1:08 PM:

Wow. Maybe I was too quick in my judgement. Sounds like a good candidate for the (soon-to-be) open AG position.

Astrid wrote on April 26, 2007 1:24 PM:

Comey may have been responsible for removing DiBiagio as USA in Maryland. He certainly seems to have been aware of the overly political motives of his public corruption cases:

"Mr. DiBiagio, a Republican, dismissed a highly publicized flap between himself and his Justice Department superiors this summer as 'overblown' and 'misconstrued.'
    In July, the Baltimore Sun published a memo in which Mr. DiBiagio urged his staff to produce three 'front-page' public-corruption or white-collar fraud indictments by Nov. 6.
    Mr. DiBiagio said the memo simply reflected the goal of producing cases that his prosecutors had been developing. But as a result of the memo, Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey directed Mr. DiBiagio to submit any proposed indictment in a public-corruption matter for his review in order to protect the 'credibility' of the office."

http://washingtontimes.com/metro/20041019-102317-3191r.htm

RW wrote on April 26, 2007 1:46 PM:

This is interesting, the Senate and House keeping poking another stick in the fire to see what sparks are going to come out.

You never know if either committees have a road map already and are merely working this like a good concert, or whether they are probing but it seems they are setting up Gonzales for a genuine charge of obstruction and perjury...

where this goes with the RNC angle appears to coincide with Emanuel's speech as the Dem's are essentially calling for a political RICO investigation.

Ironic to me has been the conspiracy denial like how the FBI and organized crime all agreed there was no Mafia in America.

Official A wrote on April 26, 2007 2:07 PM:

Reading this piece on Comey,

http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/politics/n_9353/index1.html

it sure sounds like he's a man with a conscience. This should be interesting.

sc: cloth, as in DOJ cut its tale from whole cloth.

roadworrier wrote on April 26, 2007 2:14 PM:

Although this is slightly off topic I would personally like to know the correlation between USA's and efforts to end paper trail voting. I assume that those who have advanced the Republican agenda would have been among the first to be cheerleaders for Diebolt, etc.
I am constantly amazed by the research efforts of those who comment here - their skills greatly surpass mine.

smkngman wrote on April 26, 2007 2:23 PM:

So Commey has integrity.

We could use him NOW, or even in a Dem administration as AG!

t-max wrote on April 26, 2007 2:28 PM:

It's not a matter of what is true that counts but a matter of what is perceived to be true."
Henry Kissinger

Our eyes should be focused on McNulty:

In the summer of 2005, Alberto Gonzales paid a visit to British Attorney General Peter Goldsmith. A British civil servant who attended told me it was quite amazing really. Gonzales was obsessed with the Official Secrets Act. In particular, he wanted to know exactly how it was used to block newspapers and broadcasters from running news stories derived from official secrets and how it could be used to criminalise persons who had no formal duty to maintain secrets.

By May 2006, Gonzales was on ABC's This Week program, convinced he had found the link.

In May 2005, they had found the perfect case. Lawrence Franklin, a key aide to Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith... It seems clear that Franklin and the two AIPAC employees had a common object, which was to invite critical public attention to U.S. policy towards Iran.

The case was passed to Paul J. McNulty while he was the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. ....

Among McNulty's key cases had been the American Taliban John Walker Lindh and the mentally unhinged Moroccan twentieth hijacker from 9/11, Zararias Moussaoui. Both cases had been sensationalized in the media. Less well known were the dozen odd cases of contractor abuse emerging from the Abu Ghraib scandal, investigated by the Pentagon's CID, and referred to McNulty. Nothing ever came of those cases; indeed, McNulty made sure of that.

McNulty quickly concluded that the AIPAC case would provide the perfect opportunity for the Gonzales projectconverting the Espionage Act into the equivalent of the British Official Secrets Act. The core of the extraordinary theory advanced by McNulty can be found in these words from one of its recent briefs:

The government respectfully submits that an 'ordinary person exercising ordinary common sense' [...] would know that foreign officials, journalists and other persons with no current affiliation with the United States government would not be entitled to receive information related to our national defense.

Let's imagine America with the Gonzales-McNulty contortion of the law in effect. We'd never know how the Bush Administration came to embrace torture as a tactic in the war on terror. We'd know nothing about the torture-by-proxy system developed with key administration allies such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Yemennot to mention the system of blacksites established by the CIA in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. We wouldn't know that the administration was violating the FISA statute with a massive surveillance program. And to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, that's just the known unknowns.

This would be a dream world for Karl Rove and Alberto Gonzales. And a nightmare for the rest of us. And the AIPAC case could, if it succeeds, bring the nation much closer to its realization.

http://harpers.org/archive/2007/04/horton-20070421ymwmeldhvami

Sally wrote on April 26, 2007 2:30 PM:

Comey should not be given a pass even before he testifies. I have not forgiven him for taking an active part in setting up Martha Stewart as the poster child for corporate fraud while Ken Lay and his ilk were footloose and fancy freee.

bordersmuggler wrote on April 26, 2007 2:40 PM:

Any trace of integrity would be refreshing now, regardless of party affiliation.

Have yet to read anything negative about ex-NM USA David Iglesias. If, in the current pseudo-investigation by OSC his firing can be linked to absence from the office due to Reserve duty, by law he could be restored to his former position in Justice.

paul lukasiak wrote on April 26, 2007 6:07 PM:

anyone want to take bets on the existence of a Comey generated "criteria and process" document for getting rid of "underperforming" US Attorneys -- and that it wasn't turned over to Congress?

bcg wrote on April 26, 2007 8:35 PM:

By The Associated Press Wed Apr 25, 7:05 PM ET

Current and former White House officials who used political e-mail accounts provided by the
Republican National Committee. The RNC provided the list Wednesday to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

So, the overwhelming majority of the people who needed to communicate off-the-record were in political affairs. I don't see how the advice of that department can be considered priviliged communications with the president: it's not about how the country is run but about how the White House (and Republican Party) campaigns. Where's the executive priviledge?

Al in Austex wrote on April 26, 2007 9:50 PM:

Comey will be under oath because all the other USA were under oath. Comey is a stand up guy .My bet is that the Conyers -Leahy Posse already have many if not all documents that will verify what Comey will testify about such as the "political fragging of David Iglesias" - ie why was Comey's list different then Sampson's list for USA 's to be terminated.
All those "Dominionist / Federalist / UnitarianExecutive Bootlickers" better go ahead and get very Anxious about Comey's upcoming DOJ debrief testimony ,because it wil only add to the volumes of "stuff " the Democrats have on these miscreant aka Bushco.
AHEM & Arkansan -whats your take on Comey ?

linda Kory wrote on April 26, 2007 10:19 PM:

Please put me on your email list, if you have one. Great performance on Bill Moyer's Journal.

Thanks,
Linda Kory

linda Kory wrote on April 26, 2007 10:20 PM:

Please put me on your email list, if you have one. Great performance on Bill Moyer's Journal.

Thanks,
Linda Kory

georged wrote on April 26, 2007 10:39 PM:

Comey is a man of integrity. This should be interesting. And Sally, Comey did go after and eventually get Ken Lay (Lay was convicted before he died, remember? That was largely Comey's doing, he was in charge of Justice's corporate cases while Deputy). Martha's stupid illegal mistake was just easier to prove in court quickly.

steambomb wrote on April 27, 2007 2:17 AM:

Yep. Comey might just come in there and give the congress the truth. That will be refreshing.

Drl. Wu wrote on April 27, 2007 10:37 AM:

This is great news. Evidence suggests that Comey may be one of the few non-Bushwhores to hold a DOJ leadership position in this administration. Maybe he'll actually "recall" something.

SC: hope

writer46 wrote on April 27, 2007 11:38 AM:

well i have just found this site thanks to a friend and is never too late

thanks and will follow your takes on shrub's administration
it seems to me they are all soo incompetent that it ie hard to believe they were elected to office more to come

mo2 wrote on April 27, 2007 1:04 PM:

Please see the two emails from September 5 and September 10, 2003 in the Bajagua water treatment bribery scandal that touches Cheney and DOJ political appointees. Mary Brandt's "political judgment" is explicitly called "anxiety" over OVP involvement.
http://www.pogo.org/m/cp/cp-Bajagua-H1.pdf

Church Street wrote on April 27, 2007 2:46 PM:

This from WaPo Capitol Briefing:

"[John] McKay, the ousted U.S. attorney for the Western District of Washington, is now a visiting professor at the Seattle University School of Law. On May 9 he's hosting a pair of his fellow fired federal prosecutors for a forum on the mass sackings last year."

nn wrote on April 27, 2007 3:50 PM:

Comey is a very, very conservative Republican lawyer.

I have no idea if he is a man of intellectual integrity, perhaps so. What is true is that there is just so much we will never know about what exactly Ashcroft and his deputies did at Justice.

Comey was Ashcroft's deputy at a time when civil liberties and basic American protections were being codified towards elimination. Where was Comey's responsibility? Just to intervene in objection at only the roughest legal edges of the wiretapping or rendition programs? Was he just somehow an "innocent" believer in this injustice?

I wish I had more answers.