Since the Comey letter news broke on Friday there have been multiple diaries written questioning his motives and actions, which is understandable given that what he did is unprecedented, perplexing, vexing and irresponsible, if not illegal, and could affect the outcome of the Presidential and down ballot elections for what could turn out to be nothing. We’ve also seen several diaries speculating about Jason Chaffetz’s involvement which, given his past history and the fact that he suddenly reversed course and announced that he was voting for Trump again just a two days earlier, deserves closer scrutiny.
What’s been left completely unexamined thus far however, though equally baffling and concerning, is the fact that the Trump surrogates started dropping hints early last week about having something up their sleeve, progressed to making bolder and brasher pronouncements throughout the week, then topped it off on Friday by taking a victory lap on conservative media channels, going so far as to claim credit for “forcing the FBI’s hand” in the decision to review the new emails.
Most of us who don’t watch Fox were unaware that Rudy Giuliani and Eric Trump’s wife, Lara Yunaska Trump, had been talking up an impending October surprise last week, however I happened to notice two separate tweets that came across my Twitter feed last Monday and Thursday and caught my attention: one quoted Lara Trump as saying, “We’ve got some stuff up our sleeve,” and the second mentioned Rudy Giuliani talking about the campaign having “surprises up its sleeve.” While I had initially dismissed both as trash talk coming out of an increasingly desperate campaign given to making hyperbolic or false claims, after Comey’s bombshell dropped, I wasn’t so sure. My first thought was is this was the “trick up their sleeve” they’d been referring to? Since nothing else has come out, I have to assume that it was. Making multiple and increasingly brazen claims of having an October surprise in store in the days leading up to the big Friday “reveal” seemed ripped straight out of a script from a reality show—a little too perfectly choreographed to be coincidental—and raised several questions in my mind:
1) Was it plausible that the the Trump campaign had been tipped off in advance that this was going to happen?
2) If so, by whom?
There was an additional and even more troubling scenario to consider:
3) Did someone connected to the Trump campaign exert pressure or influence on the FBI, either indirectly or directly, to take this action?
I starting digging online to see what I might be able to find, fully aware that, while I might be able to locate a few relevant nuggets of information, only a professional investigative reporter with the time, expertise and requisite sources at his or her disposal would really be able to get to the bottom of this.
What I did uncover are several interesting videos and audio files recorded over the last week which, to use Comey’s own words, “appear to be pertinent to the investigation.” I’ve posted the most “pertinent” in chronological order beginning Monday, October 24 below.
If you watch these videos in sequence, it’s striking how Giuliani’s excitement and cockiness escalates with each subsequent appearance, which begs the question of whether it’s feasible that someone had been leaking this information to him in advance?
According to CNN, the FBI have been aware of the newly “found” emails for several weeks, and by his own admission, (it’s on the10/28/16 Lars Larson Show audio which you can listen to below), Giuliani has been talking to both former and active FBI agents very recently. While this is not unusual on its face, because Giuliani would have gotten to know many agents during his tenure as US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, it’s clear from his comments that the main topic of his discussion with the agents, including ones currently in the field, was Comey’s handling of the Clinton investigation.
Setting aside the legality of FBI agents discussing an investigation that hadn’t been officially “closed” with someone outside the agency, one wonders if any of the agents Giuliani spoke with were assigned to the Anthony Weiner case? If so, were details of this case, including Huma Abedin emails found on Weiner’s laptop, also discussed with Giuliani? Could he have played a role in encouraging or advising the agents to escalate the matter? While it’s a fair question to consider under the circumstances and not outside of the realm of possibility, it would be premature to jump to any conclusions based on what is actually known so far.
What we do know for a fact, however, is that Giuliani has been on a rampage against Comey since July and has savaged him time and time again for caving on the Clinton investigation. Here’s one example from Fox Business News:
An article entitled, “Comey Used To Work For Me, And I'm Disappointed In Him” contains links to several other interviews where he essentially repeats the same arguments.
More on this, including the “revolution within the FBI” rumors that Giuliani has helped to spread can be found in the aforementioned 10/28/16 Lars Larson audio and comments below.
[For the record, Giuliani was indeed Comey’s boss for three years, after Rudy hired him in 1987.]
I’d be curious to hear from attorneys with election law expertise what the penalties are for using illegally obtained information for the purposes of affecting the outcome of an election?
Here are the rest of the videos and audio...
Week 10/24/16-10/28/16 Videos/Audio Files in Date/Time Order
Monday, October 24
About 2:14 in, Lara Trump in response to Steve Doocey’s question about dropping an October surprise “toward Hillary Clinton,” replies “There’s still a few days left in October...we’ve got some stuff up our sleeve.”
Tuesday, October 25
The very next day a giddy Rudy Giuliani appears on “Fox & Friends” and in response to Brian Kilmeade’s question about the Trump campaign’s plan for the final two weeks before the election, laughs and says, “You’ll see. We got a couple of surprises left.” He adds, “Surprises in the way that we’re going to campaign to get our message out there. Maybe in a little bit of a different way. And you’ll see. And I think it will be enormously effective.”
As Giuliani leaves the Fox studio that same morning, a MyCityPaper reporter asks him for hints as to what the October surprise might be, to which he responds, “No hints, but it'll be good.’”
Thursday, October 27
Appearing on “America’s Newsroom,” @2:16 in Giuliani says, "I think he's [Trump] got a surprise or two that you're going to hear about in the next few days. I mean, I mean...I'm talking about some... pretty big surprises...You’ll see. (Cackles).” Then he continues, “We’re not going to go down, and we’re certainly not gonna stop fighting. We've got a couple things up our sleeve that should turn this around."
Friday, October 28
Since Friday’s big news dropped, and in almost every subsequent appearance thereafter, Kellyanne Conway, has gone out of her way to press the point that the Trump campaign didn’t start this investigation, which based on her past-track record, would seem to indicate exactly the opposite.
In fact, in one of Kellyanne’s first interviews on Fox Business News Friday morning at 11:48 EDT, shortly after the story broke at 10 am EDT, the very first words out of her mouth were, “Well, whatever FBI Director Comey and the FBI has decided in reopening this investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private server and emails has nothing to do with our campaign insofar as we learn about the news when everybody else does.” If you watch the rest of the interview, you’ll find that she seemed unusually well-prepared---armed with ready-made answers and arguments---for someone who just found out about this “along with the rest of us.”
On Friday afternoon’s “The Lars Larson Show,” Rudy Giuliani joins Lars to tap dance on Hillary’s grave and engage in wild, unsubstantiated speculation.
Most relevant for our purposes is that Giuliani brings up several rumors he’s gotten from “both former and active agents” he’s spoken with “who obviously don’t want to identify themselves.” He asserts that “there’s a kind of revolution going on within the FBI,” and Comey is “feeling the pressure.” He also attempts to somehow conflate the FBI investigation with the Wikileaks memo referring to “Clinton, Inc” and compares the Clintons and their allies to a Mafia crime family.
Interestingly, Rudy’s comments about dissent in the ranks of the FBI mirror exactly the comments of former FBI agents quoted in an October 6 article in the New York Post, “FBI agents are ready to revolt over the cozy Clinton probe.” It should also be noted that the date of this Post article, highly critical of Comey, coincides with New York Bureau’s discovery of additional emails on Weiner’s laptop.
It should be further noted that other right-wing pundits are out there promulgating this storyline of dissent in the FBI ranks as well, perhaps operating under the theory that keeping the “pressure” on and “working the ref” seems to be having the desired effect!
audioboom.com/...
In a Friday evening appearance on Rita Cosby’s radio show, Lara Trump tells Rita that the latest email scandal will be the “nail in the coffin” of the Hillary Clinton, and credits her father-in-law, Donald Trump with putting pressure on the FBI which resulted in their decision to review newly discovered emails, “I think my father-in-law forced their hand in this ... “ She also adds that if “he had not put that pressure on, by keeping this in the forefront, the new emails would not be under as much scrutiny.”
