Former FBI Director James Comey was ready with his own spin the second the Department of Justice’s Inspector General’s report damning the FBI investigation into President Trump’s campaign was released. Comey announced to the cooing media that the report had “vindicated” him. The media dutifully transcribed his tale:
REPORTER: Do you think this is vindication?
FORMER FBI DIRECTOR JAMES COMEY: It is. I mean, the FBI’s had to wait two years while the president and his followers lied about the institution. Finally the truth gets told.
Of course, anyone who looked at the report for even one minute knew that Comey’s spin was complete balderdash.
The man who lied about spying on Trump’s campaign, how much the made-up Steele “dossier” played a role in getting warrants to spy, and overseeing the investigation filled with dozens of “errors,” now characterizes the IG Report – repudiating all those wrongs – as “vindication.”
So it was all lies. No treason. No spying on the campaign. No tapping Trumps wires. It was just good people trying to protect America. https://t.co/9nurCaIBq2
— James Comey (@Comey) December 9, 2019
But lest your upchuck reflex still twitches at the mention of Comey’s selfless moral rectitude in trying to destroy Trump, he’s here to set the record straight: he’s still right – even when he’s wrong.
On Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace told the ousted lawman that the Inspector General testified that no one was “vindicated” in his report. But Comey was ready. Out of his murse, he whipped out the Bill Clinton defense from decades ago that we all remember because it didn’t work then, either. In his attempt to flummox the irascible Wallace, Comey whipped out the “It depends on what the meaning of is is” Jedi mind shield:
CHRIS WALLACE: The IG says you should feel no vindication.
JAMES COMEY: Well, maybe it turns upon how we understand the word.
Comey helpfully drew us a grammar tree explaining what he meant by the word that differs from the rest of humanity’s definition. Comey’s new and improved definition of vindication included, “… the FBI was accused of treason, of illegal spying, of tapping Mr. Trump’s wires illegally, of opening an investigation without justification of being a criminal conspiracy to unseat — defeat and then unseat a president. All of that was nonsense.”
And even on his own terms he got it all wrong. As we reported, the IG testified that surveillance on Trump’s campaign was illegal. The low bar for the initiation of the investigation was passable by the IG’s lights, but the predicate was based on the “thinnest” of grounds and is now under criminal investigation by the Attorney General’s office. It also appears, according to text messages by people involved, that the point of the investigation was to get rid of Trump. And it was done to tamper with the outcome of the 2016 election, being as it was based on wispy opposition research bought and paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and DNC.
Not one of the dozens of “mistakes” made in the investigation of Trump’s campaign ever redounded in Trump’s favor.
Comey wasn’t vindicated in any of his ever-changing definitions of the word. Not even close.
Watch the interview for yourself:
