Those familiar with pop culture will recall that as comedian Jerry Seinfeld’s eponymous television show began to wind down and run out of plot lines, the script writers came up with the idea of having a television show about making a television show.
The show about making a show was pitched as “a show about nothing.”
So it was with Tuesday’s Senate Intelligence Committee hearing featuring Attorney General Jeff Sessions as the principal witness; it’s a hearing about nothing.
Sessions was asked to testify before the Committee after former FBI Director James Comey—now a documented liar, leaker and potentially an indictable perjurer—implied that Sessions had previously undisclosed contacts with the Russian ambassador.
Almost immediately after being sworn in, Sessions consulted with career ethics attorneys at the Department of Justice, and shortly thereafter recused himself from the Russia investigation only because of his participation in President Trump’s campaign. Since the day he submitted his recusal, the attorney general has not been briefed on or participated in any investigation within the scope of his recusal.
Plus, since March 2, 2017 DOJ spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores has consistently denied the existence of any third meeting at the Mayflower Hotel with the Russian ambassador.
So, this allegation is complete nonsense and is merely payback from Comey for Sessions’ role in his very public—and well-deserved—firing by President Trump.
James Comey’s self-serving lies are now well-documented, most recently by our friends at Powerline where John Hinderaker has an extensive post documenting one of Comey’s more egregious lies before the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Readers may recall that Comey claimed that after serving Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, he only felt obliged to create his now infamous CYA notes after meeting with President Trump because, unlike other presidents he served, he found Trump to be “untrustworthy.”
However, as Hinderaker points out, that is a complete lie.
In words eerily similar to the ones he used to describe his meeting with President Trump, Comey sent himself, and a group of colleagues sure to leak, an email documenting an Oval Office conversation regarding the post-9/11 warrantless surveillance program with President Bush.
The emails were leaked and ended up as source material in a book-length attack on Vice President Dick Cheney, Angler, authored by liberal writer Barton Gellman.
The heroic allusion to a religious figure, the setting of the conversation—practically everything about the conversation with President Bush that he documented in the email record is replayed in his account of the conversation with President Trump.
Hinderaker observes Comey brought this episode up last week in order to paint himself, not as a sneak who dictated a memo to cover himself every time he had a conversation with a president, but rather as an honest man who was uniquely concerned about Donald Trump’s trustworthiness.
But the record shows that it is Comey, not the presidents he served, who has proven to be untrustworthy.
The notion that Attorney General Jeff Sessions would collude to undermine the country he has sworn to protect for almost 50 years is baseless and has no place in civilized discourse.
Sessions asked for his hearing with the Senate Intel committee to be open, in full view of the American public. This is not the action of a public servant with something to hide.
James Comey stated in his testimony that he was “not … aware of any kind of memorandum issued from the attorney general or the DOJ to the FBI outlining parameters of [the attorney general’s] recusal.” Contrary to that statement, Mr. Comey received an email from the attorney general’s chief of staff on March 2, 2017, informing him and relevant DOJ officials of the recusal and its parameters, and directing them and their staff “not to brief the attorney general … about, or otherwise involve the attorney general … in any such matters described.”
At no time did Mr. Comey inform Sessions of his concerns about the substance of any one on one conversation he had with the president, something that Comey himself confirmed in his sworn testimony last week.
When Mr. Comey did raise the issue of him and his FBI staff following proper communications protocol with the White House, the attorney general responded by saying that the FBI and DOJ needed to be careful about following appropriate policies regarding contacts with the White House.
All this would, frankly, be old news about thoroughly discredited shrinking man James Comey if Senate Republicans would only grow a spine and stop responding to every provocation rolled out by anti-Trump Democrats.
Despite the fact that absolutely no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians has been found, and no evidence of Russian hacking of the election has been presented, growing a spine is a stage of growth that God has yet to bestow upon most Senate Republicans.
Comey has already admitted he leaked classified government documents in order to manipulate the Department of Justice into appointing a Special Counsel to investigate the non-existent Russian hacking of the 2016 election as payback for his firing.
Tuesday’s hearing about nothing featuring former Senator, now Attorney General, Jeff Sessions should be the last time the government of the United States allows itself to be manipulated into responding to the lies and provocations of James Comey. {eoa}
George Rasley is editor of Richard Viguerie’s ConservativeHQ.
This article was first published at ConservativeHQ.com. Used with permission.
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