In all the endless media coverage of the James Comey hearing, repeatedly the accusation arises that President Trump obstructed justice by supposedly telling Comey - as Comey recorded in his now infamous memo - the following with reference to his fired National Security advisor General Michael Flynn:
"I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”
With this as the standard, curiously, our media friends seem to be overlooking another president doing his version of the same thing. Could it have anything to do with the fact the other president was named Barack Obama?
Let’s go back in time to the Sunday of April 10, of 2016. Fox’s Chris Wallace sits down with President Obama for a chat. Of the subjects discussed there was, then hot and heavy, the tale of Hillary Clinton and her e-mails that turned up on her home-brewed server. When asked about them, Mr. Obama replied as follows, here reported by Fox:
“There’s carelessness in terms of managing emails, that she has owned, and she recognizes,” Obama told Fox News' Chris Wallace, in his first interview with the cable network since 2008.
The President also said that:
“Here’s what I know: Hillary Clinton was an outstanding Secretary of State. She would never intentionally put America in any kind of jeopardy.”
Take note of two words, which I am putting in bold print for emphasis. The President looked the camera - and anyone else watching - in the eye and said Clinton had exhibited “carelessness” in handling her e-mails but that “She would never intentionally put America in any kind of jeopardy.”
Was James Comey watching this interview? It's likely he saw it or learned about it. And not quite three months later, on July 5, 2016, Director Comey gave his famous press conference in which he cleared Clinton. And what two words did he use in his statement? See below, bold print supplied:
“I should add here that we found no evidence that any of the additional work-related e-mails were intentionally deleted in an effort to conceal them.
….Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.
All the cases prosecuted involved some combination of: clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information; or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct; or indications of disloyalty to the United States; or efforts to obstruct justice. We do not see those things here.”
In other words, curiously, the FBI Director used either the exact words President Obama used or a form of them- “intentionally” and “carelessness” - in describing Clinton’s handling of her e-mails, and, for good measure also threw in the word “intentional”.
So what do we have here?
On the one hand we have people out there suggesting Trump’s mere expression to Comey - which Trump denied saying today - of "I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go” is flat-out evidence of a presidential obstruction of justice.
Meanwhile, right out there in the open last year, we see then-President Obama making his view of Clinton’s e-mail use crystal clear in a way that his FBI Director could not possibly miss. She was guilty merely of “carelessness” and would never do such a harmful thing “intentionally.” And just by the purest coincidence, there is his FBI Director standing at a podium three months later using a version of those same words to exonerate Clinton.
Were there media shrieks of an Obama obstruction of justice? Demands that President Obama be impeached? Endless coverage that the Clinton Justice Department and the FBI had become adjuncts of the Clinton campaign? Nah.
Then this week, astoundingly from Comey of all people, we learn this, as reported here in the Daily Caller:
“Comey testified on Thursday that Lynch successfully pressured him into using the Clinton campaign’s spin on the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state.
Lynch told Comey to call the investigation a ‘matter’ rather than an ‘investigation,’ Comey said. When he asked Lynch why, he said, she dodged the question, saying: ‘Just call it a matter.’
Comey emphasized that the order, ‘gave the impression that the attorney general [Lynch] was looking to align the way we talked about our work with the way the political campaign was describing the same activity, which was inaccurate.
Comey said he complied with Lynch’s directive to use the ‘inaccurate’ terminology because it ‘wasn’t a hill worth dying on.’
The former FBI director cited Lynch’s order as well as her private tarmac meeting with Bill Clinton as the reason why he took the unusual step of holding a press conference to announce the results of the Clinton email investigation.”
So now - almost a full year after all of this has passed, we find Comey finally admitting that yes indeed on the personal instructions of then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch herself he was being ordered to trim his language on Clinton’s e-mails - turning an “investigation” into a mere “matter” - in an effort to carry water for the Clinton campaign.
The question the media seem reluctant to ask? If President Obama’s Attorney General was making it a deliberate point to bring the FBI into compliance with the sensibilities of the Clinton campaign? The why wouldn’t the President himself feel perfectly free to simply go on television - Fox News of all places - and boldly telegraph his views on how the Clinton e-mails “matter” should be handled by that same FBI Director?
Answer? There is no reason. The President did exactly that. And it seems that quite clearly his FBI Director, who tells us now that refusing to follow the Obama Attorney General’s instructions that turned an “investigation” to a mere “matter” “wasn’t a hill worth dying on” was not about to die on another hill in a fight with the President of the United States.
And where was - and is - the extensive media coverage of all of this behind the scenes drama in the Obama administration? Where was/is the look into whether President Obama was boldly and cleverly obstructing justice right out there for all to see?
Good question.
It reminds of this famous bit of dialogue between the famed detective Sherlock Holmes and a Scotland Yard detective named Gregory in the short story “Silver Blaze” as the two investigate the murder of a horse trainer and the disappearance of the horse.
Gregory "Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”
Holmes: "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”
Gregory: "The dog did nothing in the night-time.”
Holmes: "That was the curious incident."
In the curious case of media coverage of James Comey and a potential obstruction of justice by President Obama? The liberal media dog didn’t bark.
Shocker.
