During a testy exchange on CNN’s New Day Monday morning, anchor Chris Cuomo accused White House Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah of “sounding like the Clinton folks” when it came to his criticism of the FBI. Cuomo apparently forgot that just a year and a half earlier, he himself sounded a lot like the “Clinton folks”, as he repeated the Democratic Presidential candidate’s talking points surrounding the Clinton e-mail investigation throughout the 2016 presidential election season.
Cuomo’s comments came after Shah suggested that politics influenced the decisions of former FBI Director James Comey; specifically referencing Comey’s controversial decision to refer to the Clinton e-mail investigation as a “matter” rather than a criminal probe.
While testifying in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee last year, Comey said that it “concerned” him that President Obama’s Attorney General Loretta Lynch asked him to use the phrase “matter” rather than “investigation” to describe the Clinton e-mail probe.
Cuomo then went on to accuse Shah of trying to "paint the FBI as a nefarious organization.” Check out the transcript below:
RAJ SHAH: And by the way, and I know you’re going to get to this, this memo that’s been outlined by members of Congress, look, a lot of people have made allegations, there have been allegations in the press by members of Congress and by the administration. We want justice that’s above board. We know that there was political influence that impacted the decisions of James Comey, the last FBI director.
CHRIS CUOMO: How do you know?
SHAH: He said so under oath. He said so under oath. He said that he changed the way in which he called the Hillary Clinton investigation, what he publicly called it rather than a criminal probe, which is what it was. He changed the nature of what he called it because the Attorney General, a political appointee of the Obama Administration told him to.
CUOMO: Jim Comey never said that he was under undue influence or duress in making those decisions. He was explaining a process.
SHAH: But he was influenced politically.
CUOMO: But don’t say Jim Comey admitted that he was getting hostile influence from anybody there. He never said it, Raj. Why paint the FBI as a nefarious organization? You guys sound like the Clinton folks during the e-mail investigation. When she was saying, “they’re just out to get us.”
It should not go unnoticed that Cuomo, like many of his colleagues on the Clinton News Network and throughout the liberal media as a whole, consistently acted as self-appointed legal counsel for Team Clinton throughout Campaign 2016. Cuomo once said she sent no classified information, despite the fact that the FBI concluded that Hillary Clinton did indeed send and receive classified information over her private server. One could argue that Cuomo's claims otherwise meant that he effectively called then-FBI Director James Comey a liar.
Ironically, less than two months later, Cuomo accused a Republican guest of calling Comey a liar after he argued that Hillary Clinton broke the law. Cuomo’s actions prove a degree of truth behind radio talk show host Chris Plante’s adage, “If the left didn’t have double standards, they’d have no standards at all.”
