FBI Forced To Turn Over Totally Unredacted Comey Memos as Calls To Release Them Grow

It’s been a busy news week, so one would be forgiven if they missed this story that was shunted to the sidebar of news websites around the internet: “The FBI was ordered to let a judge review copies of former director James Comey’s memos about his interactions with President Donald Trump before he was fired to determine whether to release them, as media organizations seek to make the documents public,” Bloomberg reported.

“U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in Washington on Thursday ordered the Federal Bureau of Investigation to submit both clean and redacted versions of the documents by April 1 as part of a Freedom of Information Act case brought by CNN and other organizations, including USA Today and the conservative activist group Judicial Watch Inc.”

That’s a pretty wide-ranging group of plaintiffs. When you have CNN and Judicial Watch standing together, that’ll grab your attention right quick. After all, Judicial Watch is currently suing to get records of communication between CNN and former Obama intelligence chiefs.

“Much from the memos has been released publicly, but some parts remain redacted. The Justice Department has said these redactions obscure information about intelligence gathering regarding foreign relations — and some parts could reveal whether foreign surveillance was used to gather information about former national security adviser Michael Flynn,” CNN reported.

“As recently as early this month, the Justice Department argued that release of other information in the Comey memos could hurt the then-ongoing Mueller investigation.”

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In the suit, CNN claimed both the president and the former FBI director had accused each other “of grave breaches of the public trust” and that the memos contain “contemporaneous records of disputed conversations.”

Judge Boasberg has said he would review the unredacted documents and decide whether or not they could be released to the public. He did not, however, specify when he would decide if they would be released.

The order came on the same day as Sen. Rand Paul called for the release of Comey’s communications regarding the Russia investigation from the floor of the Senate.

The Kentucky Republican introduced an amendment to a House resolution that “calls for the public release of all information and communications involving James Comey, John Brennan, James Clapper, Susan Rice, Barack Obama, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Loretta Lynch, Bruce Ohr or anyone else in the Obama Administration concerning the Steele dossier or investigating Donald Trump and his campaign,” according to a press release from Paul’s office.

“What do we know so far? We know that we spent $30 million to investigate this, and they have decided and included — after doing hundreds of interviews and thousands of subpoenas — they have concluded that President Trump did not collude with the Russians, did not conspire with the Russians, did not commit a crime with the Russians and, as the president has said repeatedly, he never talked to the Russians,” Paul said in a speech on the Senate floor.

“Now that we know that, in addition to the Mueller report, we also need to know was there malfeasance? Was there misuse of government power? Did President Obama’s administration get involved in an election to actually try and manipulate and infiltrate the Trump campaign to entrap them or try to spread information that was incorrect?” he continued.

“We need to know that.”

Yes, we do.

Now that the farce of Russian collusion is over, we need to know what the functionaries of the Obama administration did in the run-up to the 2016 election in regard to the Trump campaign. Furthermore, Comey’s conduct while in the office of FBI director — a position that’s supposed to be nonpartisan — is crucial inasmuch as his firing was the impetus for the special counsel.

At the very least, the Obama administration’s actions look sketchy. Yet, they’ve never been put under scrutiny because we’ve been so busy talking about Russian collusion. Any discussion about the malodorous FISA warrant on Carter Page, which was obtained with a dossier that was opposition research paid for by the Clinton campaign and DNC, was always pushed to the back-burner.

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There’s no more Russian collusion to discuss, however, and now that our two-year national wild goose chase has ended, it’s high time to look at the individuals who sent us on that chase.

Comey has been particularly open in his contempt for President Trump; while one might expect that behavior from someone who was fired by the nation’s chief executive, questions remain about Comey’s politicization of the office and how involved he was in the investigation of the Trump campaign.

Both his unredacted memos regarding his communications with President Trump and his communications on the Russia investigation would be key in determining just how swampy Comey’s conduct was and what role it played in the wider swamp ecosystem. It’s something America deserved to know a long time ago — not just with Comey but with figures such as James Clapper, John Brennan, Peter Strzok and Bruce Ohr.

One hopes this judge agrees. He can play a part — a small one, but a part nonetheless — in revealing the larger picture of how the intelligence community dealt with Trump’s campaign and what happened when he became president.

As for Republicans, it’s time for them to go on the offensive about the intelligence community and the Trump campaign. This is the one opportunity to parry the Democrats’ three-year thrust of a witch-hunt. It’s time the depth of that witch-hunt was exposed.

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