Known Knowns
Michael Ché on Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update made a telling comment:
“FBI raids are like your girlfriend going through your phone, she’s only doing it to prove what she already knows.”
The investigators already know. They already know whether the President of the United States conspired with the Russian government to influence the election of 2016. While Fox News and the rest claim “…after sixteen months and millions of dollars there is no evidence of collusion,” investigators know the truth. As Don Rumsfeld so eloquently put it, it is a “known known.”
The raid on Michael Cohen’s office and home will prove what they already know. So will the evidence gained through months of electronic surveillance on Cohen, all approved both by the Justice Department and by Federal Judges. So will the testimony of Popadoupolos, Flynn and Gates. The investigators already know all of this, they already have conclusions drawn about what occurred in the years leading up to the election.
As James Comey said in his interview with George Stephanopoulos, after a year any good investigators will have conclusions. If they don’t, they are incompetent.
Reporters are unearthing bits and pieces of what investigators have. The McClatchy News is reporting that Michael Cohen did travel to Prague in the late summer of 2016, despite his denials. Others have linked Cohen to meetings in Prague with a close advisor to Putin, and to one of the Clinton email hackers. Should this turn out to be accurate, it more than confirms information from the Steele Dossier, lending more credence to the rest of the report. If true, it also is the “smoking gun” of conspiracy, and probably the end of the Trump Presidency.
The Russiagate world will be focused on the Comey book this week. While we are still waiting for our copy, I have listened to Comey’s interviews. He strikes me as a moral and honest man, who made difficult decisions. While I disagree with what he did and believe that he altered the outcome of the election, I don’t think he used “bad judgment.” I think he used his best judgment, directed by his own moral compass. He tried to make a “black and white” decision in what is ultimately a very gray and political world.
Comey is a prosecutor, a man who spent his career making judgments about whether the actions of people were legal or illegal. He never stepped away from the high profile defendants from John Gotti to Martha Stewart to Hillary Clinton. In listening to Comey’s interview, he clearly used those skills to evaluate Donald Trump. His conclusion: a man morally unfit to be President.
The same applied to his decisions about Hillary Clinton. Comey judged that she did something wrong in using her personal email. He couldn’t make it a crime, and his statement in the summer of 2016 showed his frustration.
This also applies to the “October Surprise” letter to Congress on reopening the Clinton investigation. Comey knew that the Weiner Laptop email investigation was going to leak out, whether he announced it or not:
“I don’t know whether that was part of a leak outta the– FBI office in New York that knew about the search warrant. But that was my concern, that once you start seeking a search warrant, especially in a criminal case– counterintelligence is different.”
In his world view, Comey would defend the integrity of the FBI by writing the letter to Congress, knowing it would be released, rather than have it leak out of the New York FBI office. He wouldn’t see it as a choice he made, but as an outcome he wanted to control.
While James Comey will be the “show” this week, the legal actions by Michael Cohen (and Stormy Daniels) will be the best sideshow. Cohen has demanded that HE determine what pieces of evidence are covered by attorney-client privilege, rather than the Justice Department “taint team” (the team of lawyers, separate from the investigators, who are going through the evidence now.) The judge should laugh this one out of court, but if not, it would create a huge shift in the investigation.
But regardless of this decision, in the end Mueller knows, and has the same relentless determination that Jim Comey showed in his career.
He will make sure that, eventually, we will all know too.
With regard to Comey’s two decisions to publicly comment on the Clinton investigation, perhaps they were morally sound. But they were both bad judgment. A decision can be morally sound and reflect bad judgment.
Comey himself has said that he regrets the strong language he used in excoriating Clinton in his first announcement ending the Clinton investigation.
And why, when he later found Clinton e-mails on a laptop, did he race to a microphone before even beginning to find out if those e-mails were merely duplicates of those already reviewed.
The answer points to a pretty serious character flaw, a fondness for microphones unlike any other FBI director in history. His Loose Lips sunk two ships.