JAMES COMEY’S HISTORY WITH THE CLINTONS

Have Bill and Hillary Clinton ever done anything that current FBI Director James Comey considers actionable in a court of law?

Apparently not.  And Hillary’s email scandals ain’t the only example.  Not by a long shot.

Here are excerpts from the latest article by Nat Hentoff (and his son, Nick), a celebrated liberal icon who, at 91 years of age, still puts most of his less talented, less liberal (in the classic sense of the world rather than what the word has been perverted into these days) colleagues to shame:

When James Comey announced his decision not to recommend the prosecution of Hillary Clinton for the misuse of classified information, it was not his first investigation of Clinton that ended without the filing of criminal charges. It was his third investigation of Clinton, and the second in which he personally decided not to charge her with a crime.

For Comey, in the words of Yogi Berra, it must have seemed “like deja vu all over again.”

In 2002, Comey had just been appointed the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York when he again found Hillary Clinton in his crosshairs. As the new U.S. attorney, Comey had inherited a well-developed investigation into allegations that the Clintons had traded presidential pardons for financial contributions to Bill Clinton’s presidential library and Hillary Clinton’s New York Senate campaign. Although a grand jury was empanelled and heard testimony from witnesses, Comey closed the investigation without filing any charges.

Deutch’s pardon, which specifically mentioned the criminal information, was widely reported in the press. As Hillary Clinton was intimately involved in the granting of pardons by her husband — and received specific warnings that her use of a personal Blackberry and private email server put classified information at risk — it is difficult to understand how Comey could reasonably conclude that she had not broken the law.

At heart, Comey is an establishmentarian who is deeply invested in the revolving-door cronyism of Washington D.C.’s financial-security-industrial complex — the “rigged system” that both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump complained about.

Throughout his career, he has shifted between high-powered jobs in the DOJ, the defense contractor Lockheed Martin, the large hedge fund Bridgewater Associates and, very briefly, academia. One doesn’t succeed in such a tight-knit, incestuous community by making enemies or antagonizing important, powerful people. The currency that matters most in this milieu is power and wealth, not a burning desire to see justice done by getting to the truth of a matter.

Comey’s first priority as an establishmentarian is to avoid political chaos, which goes a long way toward explaining why, for him, the third time was not the charm in his prosecutorial investigations of Hillary Clinton.

I must admit I did not know James Comey’s cozy past with the Clintons before this hearing commenced (thanks, again, mainstream media for not telling us about it).  If I did, I assure you my expectations of what where Director Comey would be going with this “investigation” would have been severely diminished.

Now, Comey’s reputation – again media driven – as “Mr. Integrity” no longer exists.

But if Hillary wins, I’m sure he’ll be laughing it all off, from the cushy spot he is likely to get in her administration.

As they used to say in those old Smith-Barney ads with John Houseman, at least he’ll have gotten it the old-fashioned way.  He’ll have earned it.