A daily roundup of the biggest stories in right-wing media.
There was an abundance of commentary on the James Comey hearing across conservative media on Thursday. Here are a few of the major themes.
The real story is what didn’t leak
At the hearing, Sen. Marco Rubio insisted to Comey that it was odd, given all of the leaks about what was happening behind the scenes at the White House, that it wasn’t leaked that Comey had told Trump he wasn’t under investigation. “We learn more from the newspaper sometimes than the open hearings,” Rubio said. “Do you ever wonder why, of all the things in the investigation, the only thing never leaked is the fact the president was never personally under investigation, despite the fact that Democrats and Republicans and the leadership of Congress have known that for weeks?”
This isn’t actually true. Senators Dianne Feinstein and Chuck Grassley told the press last month that Comey had told them in a briefing that Trump himself was not a target. “It’s absurd to suggest that the *only* thing that didn’t leak from FBI/DOJ was that Trump wasn’t under investigation,” the Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes tweeted. Nevertheless, the claim took off.
The Daily Caller’s Jack Crowe called it “the most obvious question” about the Comey leaks. “Rubio’s curiosity as to why the absence of an investigation into Trump was seemingly the only detail of the FBI’s Russia investigation that wasn’t leaked is especially relevant considering Comey’s admission that he himself was the source of a major leak,” he wrote. Others on Twitter, including Donald Trump Jr., agreed.
But Hillary Clinton
Near the beginning of the hearing, Chairman Richard Burr directed a line of questioning at Comey about his decision to make public the results of the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email. Comey said that move had been partially motivated by his concern that the Department of Justice wouldn’t “credibly” close the case, given that Attorney General Loretta Lynch had told him to refer to the investigation as a “matter.” Sen. James Lankford later pressed him to elaborate:
Comey: We were getting to a place where the attorney general and I were both going to testify and talk publicly about it I wanted to know was she going to authorize us to confirm we have an investigation. She said yes, don’t call it that, call it a matter. I said why would I do that? She said, just call it a matter. […] I just said the press is going to completely ignore it. That’s what happened when I said we opened a matter. They all reported the FBI has an investigation open. So that concerned me because that language tracked the way the campaign was talking about the FBI’s work and that’s concerning.
Lankford: You gave the impression that the campaign was somehow using the language as the FBI because you were handed the campaign language?
Comey: I don’t know whether it was intentional or not but it gave the impression that the attorney general was looking to align the way we talked about our work with the way it was describing that. It was inaccurate.
Comey later went as far as to agree with Sen. John Cornyn that Lynch gave the appearance of having a conflict of interest, partially stemming from Bill Clinton’s infamous meeting on the tarmac with her, and that the appointment of a special prosecutor may have been appropriate.
Naturally, some conservatives pounced on this.
The Daily Wire’s Aaron Bandler said the segments about Lynch were among the hearing’s biggest moments. “That sounds way more like obstruction of justice than Trump just asking Comey if he might wind down the Flynn investigation when Comey did not do so afterwards,” he wrote.
At National Review, Kevin Williamson demurred. “[T]ry as the Republicans might to turn the discussion to Mrs. Clinton, she is not president,” he wrote. “Donald Trump is.”
The wrongness of the “left-wing” media
The Daily Wire’s Robert Kraychik highlighted Comey’s telling Lankford that “many, many” stories published about Russia had been “dead wrong.” “Reports based on anonymous sources advancing innuendo regarding the ‘Russia investigation’ have become ubiquitous across left-wing and Democrat-aligned news media outlets such as CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, and The Washington Post,” he wrote. “Interrelated narratives include the framing of President Donald Trump as an agent of political subversion beholden to or conspiring with the Russian state and casting Republican voters as duped by ‘fake news’ propaganda. dispensed by the Kremlin. Donald Trump’s presidency, by extension, is framed as illegitimate.”
One of the stories explicitly singled out by Comey during the hearing was a February New York Times article alleging communications between members of the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence. “Until today, the February report had not been substantially contested or refuted, and its claims had been widely propagated throughout the media,” National Review’s Tiana Lowe wrote. “That single article quickly became one of the founding documents in the seemingly single-minded mission on the part of some in the media to expose evidence of direct collusion between the Russians and Donald Trump. And while Comey did not allege that the sources themselves were lying, the former FBI director did strongly insinuate that reporters have placed too much faith in sources claiming knowledge of classified information.”
What Trump did was bad, but not obstruction
At National Review, David French cast doubt on whether Comey offered evidence of obstruction:
Trump not only has the power to fire Comey, he has the power to end DOJ investigations. When criminally investigating a public official for the use of his lawful powers, the evidence of corrupt intent has to be well-nigh overwhelming before filing a credible criminal charge.
At the same time, however, a president can abuse his power without violating criminal statutes. His actions can be wrong and dangerous without also breaking the law. And there are multiple elements of Trump’s conduct that are obviously and deeply problematic.
The Blaze’s Sarah Gonzales argued that Trump’s behavior might stem from a benign ignorance of Justice Department norms:
The overall picture seems to have been that Trump offended Comey and other Justice Department officials by simply not knowing about their institutional norms of independence, not through any active malice or desire to criminal impede an investigation.
This is one area where Trump’s unfamiliarity with Washington may well have caused a controversy that a president who was more of an “insider” would have handled without creating a fuss.
The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro wrote that the hearing offers Trump a defense—that he had clearly not been guilty of obstruction but did evince impatience with the progress of the Justice Department’s work. Shaprio maps out what Trump should say:
’Look, I know I should have had patience with the process. But I’m not by nature a patient man. I want to get things done, and the cloud hanging over my administration thanks to Democratic scandalmongering has hampered my ability to pursue policies to help the American people. Calling my actions obstruction – without any evidence of an underlying crime – is nasty.
So let’s get back to work. I’ll try to contain my impatience with a process that simply doesn’t exist in the private sector, where we’re judged on whether we perform or not, not on what people say about us. And all of my Democratic colleagues should stop trying to oust me out of loyalty to Hillary Clinton, and start trying to focus on helping me help Americans.’
That’s what Trump could say.
Instead, as Shapiro notes, Trump “sent out his lawyer to deny the key components of Comey’s account. This sets up an open conflict in credibility between Trump and Comey, and that’s no good for Trump.”
