(National Sentinel) That’s Rich: It seems as though these days neither the Legislative or Executive branches of government are ‘permitted’ to perform their constitutional duties without the permission of the Judicial Branch, as evidenced by the number of federal court lawsuits filed by people who simply want to defy the law, Republicans in general, and the Trump administration.
Leaker James Comey, fired as FBI director by POTUS Donald Trump in May 2017 because he was corrupt, has gone to federal court to fight a congressional subpoena requiring him to provide testimony behind closed doors.
As the Washington Examiner reports, Comey was served his subpoena last week by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., but he immediately said he would only testify publicly.
The news site noted further:
The House Judiciary Committee, alongside the House Oversight Committee, has been conducting a joint investigation into the Justice Department and FBI’s actions ahead of the 2016 presidential election. This includes the probe into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.
The chairmen of both committees wrote a letter to Comey on Sept. 21 requesting he appear voluntarily for a closed-door interview, to which Comey said in a letter on Oct. 1 that he would decline the invitation.
The former FBI director’s testimony “will be subject to selective leaking by members of the Judiciary Committee in furtherance of the Committee’s abuse of these proceedings and harassment of witnesses who appear in closed-door depositions,” his lawyer, Vincent Cohen, said in his court filing.
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“Mr. Comey asks this Court’s intervention not to avoid giving testimony but to prevent the [two committees] from using the pert of a closed interview to peddle a distorted, partisan political narrative about the Clinton and Russian investigations through selective leaks,” Cohen added.
Never mind that Comey’s leaks of alleged conversations with the president (which are automatically classified) to a Columbia University friend for the purposes of having him pass it along to The New York Times make his demand for an open hearing seem rather hollow and hypocritical. There is good reason why Goodlatte wants to conduct the hearing in private.
No doubt lawmakers will want to ask Comey questions about confidential and/or classified information; if the hearing is conducted in public, he won’t be able to answer those questions (and he knows that by the way).
That’s why he wants the hearings to be in open session — so he can appear as though he’s being the most transparent person ever while repeatedly refusing to answer questions in a public venue that involve information he knows he cannot divulge in that kind of setting.
Comey was, is, and will continue to be a member of the Deep State. He isn’t interested in doing the right thing for his country; he’s only interested in what all Deep State members are interested in: Preserving their power base in D.C. long enough to kick POTUS Trump out of the White House.
Beyond that, it’s getting really old having to rely on federal courts to ‘give permission’ to the Executive and Legislative branches so they can perform their constitutionally mandated functions.
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