One of the most significant revelations of James Comey’s book is that there exists classified information, still unknown to this day, supporting the argument that Attorney General Loretta Lynch subverted the Hillary Clinton email investigation:
If the investigation continued on the same trajectory, the challenge was going to be closing the case in a way that maintained the confidence of the American people that their justice system was working in an honest, competent, and nonpolitical manner. We’d never convince the extreme Clinton haters in the news media of that, of course, but hopefully we could persuade a majority of fair- and open-minded Americans.
But in early 2016, there was a development that threatened to challenge that effort significantly. A development still unknown to the American public to this day. At that time, we were alerted to some materials that had come into the possession of the United States government. They came from a classified source — the source and content of that material remains classified as I write this. Had it become public, the unverified material would undoubtedly have been used by political opponents to cast serious doubt on the attorney general’s independence in connection with the Clinton investigation.
There has been a small amount of attention about this — and in a moment I will discuss just how little attention it has received — but I haven’t seen anyone ask the question I ask in this post: Why doesn’t Donald Trump declassify this information?
We’ve seen unprecedented levels of declassification in recent months in service of partisan agendas, most strikingly in the case of the memos relating to the FISA warrant on Carter Page. The President can declassify anything he wants to. Why not this?
The only reasonable conclusion I can think of is that President Trump doesn’t know about it — because it hasn’t been on the teevee, and it has not been discussed as a major national controversy.
Think about it. Have you seen anything about this on TV? Why is this not the subject of a national outcry? Amid all the focus on trifles, like the fact that Comey described the size of the president’s hands and the color of his skin, this revelation has received remarkably little media attention.
It has not gone wholly unreported, especially if you read blogs like RedState or Hot Air. streiff had a post about it here, although the principal focus of that post was to argue that Comey was untrustworthy and disloyal to Lynch for mentioning it at all. John Sexton at Hot Air had a typically sharp and insightful post about it here.
But, while the story has been mentioned in Big Media, they have treated it as a side note. In a rollout post from ABC News hyping Snuffleupagus’s interview with Comey, the headline was Comey comparing Trump’s desire for loyalty to the concept of omerta in the Italian Mafia. The passage about Lynch? That is buried in paragraph 17 of the story. ABC News was not alone. Even Fox News buried the Lynch information in paragraph 14 of an article that prominently featured Comey’s comments about Trump, with quotes about tie lengths and tanning goggles coming in paragraph five.
That means Fox News decided to make Comey’s personal observations about Trump nine paragraphs more prominent than any mention of secret information showing the attorney general may have subverted justice in a criminal investigation of the Democrat candidate for the presidency of the United States.
In John Sexton’s post, he called it “amazing, given all of the leaks of unverified information we’ve seen in the past year, that this particular tidbit on Lynch remains unknown to the public.” But Big Media isn’t particularly interested in information that shows Hillary Clinton got a pass in the email investigation. (And oh boy, did she. Actually reading Comey’s book makes that clearer than ever.)
That’s not just because Big Media editors are leftist partisans, although they are. It’s also a business decision. They get your eyeballs by focusing on one topic: Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump. And this Loretta Lynch story connects to Trump only indirectly. So Big Media will distract you by calling Comey’s memoir “bitchy” to Trump and focusing on trivia about Trump, revving up partisans about Trump Trump Trump, and obscuring the single most interesting and significant revelation of the book.
Keep your eye on the ball. Let’s get the message to President Trump that this material exists and that the American people want to know what it is. Share this post on social media. Tell your friends about it. Write prominent people and urge them to talk about it.
I can’t imagine that President Trump wouldn’t declassify this information — if we could just get the nation to stop talking about book quotes about half moons under Trump’s eyes, and focus on a potential subversion of justice by a top law enforcement official.
UPDATE: A commenter links to a 2017 Washington Post story that suggests that this document has been discussed before, and discounted by the FBI. If this is the document, there may be nothing to this story after all.
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