FIRED FBI Director James Comey finally testified under oath before the Senate Intelligence Committee, armed with his contemporaneous memoranda he wrote immediately after each communication with President Donald Trump that made him feel uncomfortable, with the integrity of his bureau and the Department of Justice in mind.
Comey, a veteran career official at the FBI who was well respected by both Democrats, Republicans, and almost every public servant he has worked with, put his name, his credibility, his honor and perhaps even his freedom on the line, when he told the committee that Trump had been lying, and that he was asked by the president to drop the Flynn investigation. The former director even disclosed that the president demanded that he give him his pledge of loyalty if he wanted to keep his job as FBI chief.
Trump fired Comey after the latter continued to move forward with the investigation against Flynn and the Trump campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
After Comey was fired, he asked his trusted friend to share one of his memoranda with the New York Times so the government may be pushed to assign a special counsel to investigate the Trump campaign-Russia connection. With that, he may be able to have the protection he needs, now as a private citizen to divulge the truth and protect the integrity of the office he held and on a bigger scale, help protect the democratic principles and institutions of America.
On Friday, June 9, Trump fired back at Comey, calling him a liar and a leaker, while at the same time, saying he felt vindicated by Comey’s testimony. Trump cherry picked parts of his fired FBI director’s statements, whereby indeed, Comey told him that he was not under investigation. The bigger picture: the Trump campaign was under investigation and Trump happens to be the head and at the top of his campaign.
Trump said he will be willing to testify under oath to prove he did nothing wrong and that Comey was the one lying.
The future of this probe will be a “He said-He said” court battle. Does Trump have the “tapes” he tweeted about against Comey, which Comey was hoping Trump would be issued a subpoena for? If so, the president will be forced to turn them over to Special Counsel Robert Mueller (who is now on top of investigating the Russia-Trump campaign connection) so the American people may and can know what really happened — who is telling the truth and who is lying. And if Comey’s testimony is indeed factual, would this constitute the impeachable offense of “obstruction of justice” which Comey said will be up to the special counsel to determine?
ABANGAN!
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Gel Santos Relos is the anchor of TFC’s “Balitang America.” Views and opinions expressed by the author in this column are solely those of the author and not of Asian Journal and ABS-CBN-TFC. For comments, go to www.TheFil-AmPerspective.com, https://www.facebook.com/Gel.Santos.Relos
