I bow to no one — well, almost no one, as I suspect Trump and Mike Flynn would beat me — I bow to almost no one in my distaste, disdain, and general disgust with James Comey, going back to when he ignored the actual law (18 USC 793(f) to be precise) to declare that Hillary Clinton wasn’t going to be charged with violating the Espionage Act. This even after Clinton kept T//SI//TK//NOFORN on an unsecured email server that was first in her bathroom and later in an unsecured rack in some random mom and pop internet service provider.
This is not to mention extracting information at that level from a Secure Compartmented Information Facility, defeating the “air gap”. This, even notwithstanding, she and her staff were trying to conceal the fact that she had used BleachBit to wipe a disk and had her staff use hammers to destroy phones.
Now, I’m not a lawyer, but my research assistant assures me that:
The legal inference made when someone tries to destroy evidence of a crime after learning they are being investigated is often referred to as “consciousness of guilt.” This inference suggests that the person’s actions, such as destroying or attempting to destroy evidence, indicate an awareness of their own guilt and an intent to obstruct justice or conceal their involvement in the crime.
Other interesting phrases that show up are “spoliation of evidence” and “obstruction of justice,” but you get the idea.
So, while I try hard to preserve a good Buddhist’s compassion to everyone, I have to say that James Comey is someone who makes it difficult. My amusement at seeing him arrested, mug-shotted, indicted, and charged, would be, shall we say, significant.
Which is why I’m afraid we’re setting ourselves up to be made fools of.
The problem, of course, is Comey’s now-deleted post with the numbers “8647”. The thing is, “86” is just not an explicit suggestion that Trump should be murdered. The code “86” means a lot of things: it can mean a server should know a certain menu item is not available; it can mean a brand of alcohol is not available in a bar; it can mean for the bouncer to throw out a difficult or obstreperous customer.
But it doesn’t mean to then take the customer into the alley and cut his throat. Or her throat, not to be sexist about it. And the idea that it means “take them 8 miles out and put them 6 feet under” appears to be an urban legend, relatively recent back-formation from the slang meaning for 86 that dates to the ’30s.
So, now it turns out that Comey actually has a book coming out in a few days about a Mary Sue main character who investigates, arrests, and apparently convicts a conservative radio talker of inciting a murder by dog-whistling. Coincidentally.
Let’s assume that Comey was actually arrested, charged, all that stuff, and then came to trial. His defense: he didn’t say assassinate Trump. The “86” just means “throw the bum out.” As part of his defense, he brings up the people who were saying “8646” and “8645” and weren’t charged — and there were apparently many.
I wouldn’t want to be the prosecutor trying to get a jury to conclude that Comey was proven, beyond a reasonable doubt, to have been calling for Trump’s assassination.
So what comes of this? Comey has gotten lots of new attention, while swearing that he didn’t have sex with that woman, that he would never want to suggest violence, and that butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. Publicity that has gotten lots of attention for his upcoming Mary Sue about what he wishes he could do to Steve Bannon, publicity that is sure to lead to more sales and probably favorable reviews in Harper’s, The Atlantic, the Washington Post, and the New York Times.
All while the legacy media points and laughs.
Look, I really don’t think I can head off this moral panic at this point. I’m just saying, like Cassandra, that it’s going to be a disaster. And we could take a deep breath and avoid it.
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