OPINION:
Joe Borelli is New York City Council member for the 51st District and Minority Whip. He is a Republican.
Cutting into the traditional day time soaps’ viewership, former FBI director James Comey’s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee today was hyped by the media as a must-see-TV event of “Super Bowl” and “blockbuster” proportions. Unfortunately for Democrats and drama-hungry media, Comey’s three hour testimony—which dismantled much of their Trump-Russia false “collusion” narrative—was anything but the soap opera they expected.
The star of the show, James Comey, came off as a disgruntled former employee trying to save face after losing the confidence of leading Democrats and Republicans over the last two years. In fact, the account Comey gave at the hearing corroborated what President Trump has said from the beginning of this witch hunt.
In the first scene, Senator Richard Burr questioned Comey about whether President Trump had ever asked him to stop the FBI’s investigation into Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election. Comey’s response was clear: “Not to my understanding, no.”
Comey made clear that the president never impeded the FBI’s Russia investigation, nor asked him to end it, and neither had any White House staff. There goes the first of the Democrats’ conspiracy theories.
In scene two, Comey put to rest media speculation that he might use his testimony to refute the president’s account that he was told three times he was not under investigation. The former FBI director confirmed repeatedly that President Trump was never under investigation, even going so far as to recall the direct quote where he told him that at no point was he personally under investigation.
While those two crucial moments totally undercut the left’s anti-Trump narrative, Comey’s testimony also shined a light on his motives that led to some revealing admissions.
In scene three, and the most personally damaging to Comey himself, he admitted to giving his written memos about conversations with President Trump to a friend at Columbia Law School with clear instructions to leak the information to the media. Comey acknowledged that he did so after being angered at a Tweet by President Trump, and the leak was aimed at trying to force the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the president. The blatant political hackery at play here is truly astounding coming from a man who once led an agency that holds independence as a high imperative.
Following that account, Comey gave a series of awkward “I don’t know” answers when he was repeatedly pressed about why he didn’t bring it to the president’s, or anyone else’s, attention that he thought the discussion of Michael Flynn was inappropriate.
The most significant takeaways from the entire hearing did not, in fact, involve alleged inappropriate conduct by the Trump administration, but rather by the Obama Justice Department. Though we’ve long known about Obama Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s interfered in the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails, this was the first time that Comey admitted under oath that Lynch gave him directives about how to handle that investigation. According to his testimony, Lynch asked him not to call the investigation an “investigation” but simply a “matter” – language that identically mirrored the messaging coming out of the Clinton campaign at the time. That the head of the Obama Justice Department attempted to get the FBI to use Clinton talking points is a gross abuse of power and the real obstruction of justice.
By the time the hearing concluded, the reviews were already in. Even liberal MSNBC host Chris Matthews had to admit that the left’s Trump-Russia collusion theory “came apart” in Comey’s testimony.
While Comey’s credibility remains in question, the fact that he repeatedly confirmed that no one from the White House, including President Trump, stood in the way of his investigation and that the President was never under investigation makes it abundantly clear that this witch hunt is nearing its rightful end.
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