James Comey’s Sunday night 20/20 interview was both highly anticipated while also being contentious and divisive even within political parties. For President Trump, however, his criticisms of Comey stand despite the debunking his points have already faced and he continued to push the same accusations on Monday morning that he has since Comey dared speak against him.
The former FBI director addressed the president’s claim about the “draft” of the Hillary Clinton exoneration in the investigation into her use of a private email server as secretary of state during his interview. When asked if that were true, Comey agreed that it was, but said that any investigator who is not already fairly clear on the outcome of investigation by the time he interviews the accused is failing at his job. It wasn’t as if Comey hadn’t already seen and analyzed the emails on Clinton’s server. He, and no one else outside the FBI, had already seen the evidence.
It is also interesting, not to mention hypocritical and confusing, that Trump continues with his insistence that Comey committed grave crimes. It’s very difficult to reconcile that with Trump’s actions toward Comey after the election and all the way up until the moment Comey made critical statements about him with Trump’s accusations now.
Not everyone agrees with James Comey and the answers he gave during the interview. There is debate as to whether or not his public statements about Hillary Clinton’s “carelessness” in the use of that email server were appropriate. There is no universal agreement on whether or not Comey should have written a book or given interviews about his interactions with Trump during an ongoing investigation into Trump’s possible obstruction of justice.
However, Trump’s continued attacks on Comey and his insistence that the former FBI director committed crimes (and the particular instances Trump points to as the crimes Comey committed) are simply inane and misleading. There is no evidence that Comey leaked classified information, nor is there any credible evidence that he lied to Congress, no matter how many times Fox & Friends agrees that there was.
No one is buying Trump’s immediate cover in which he pretended to be tough on Russia for any currency devaluation, either. If he had been tough on Russia, or intended to be now, he would have imposed the sanctions Congress unanimously agreed upon and that he signed.
Twitter was more focused on the president’s criticism of Comey than any accusations against China and Russia. See some of their comments below:
Featured image via Getty/Pool
