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Former F.B.I. Director Named Special Counsel for Russia Investigation
- dboreham 9y agoOh I see. Not _that_ former FBI director..
- openmosix 9y agoThat would have been hilarious. Aaaand... I'm back.
- mkhpalm 9y agoDidn't the NYT just get done suggesting that Trump fired Comey to stop this investigation? https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/10/us/politics/comey-russia-investigation-fbi.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/10/us/politics/comey-russia-... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/09/opinion/donald-trumps-firing-of-james-comey.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/09/opinion/donald-trumps-fir... I'm starting to think there is something to what all those trumpsters have been saying... I simply cannot keep up with the 180 narrative flips going on in the media right now.
- vernie 9y agoExplain.
- mkhpalm 9y agoI'll try, sorry if I fail. It feels like the media is just thrashing right now. One week we are told Trump fired Comey to stop the investigation on his ties to Russia. To be honest, I had a hard time swallowing that a thing like that hinged on 1 person at the FBI. But now if you read all these papers they are saying Trump is in for it because Robert Mueller is named special council in the Trump/Russia investigation. So the investigation goes on, even though last week it wasn't supposed to according to the same sources. That leads me to the other recent thing regarding the Comey memo. The FBI (Comey) cleared Flynn January 24th but this "memo" says Trump asked Comey in mid-February to let Flynn go. Why would anybody regardless of their intelligence ask for something they've already gotten? Long story short: I'm having a hard time making any sense of what seems like obvious problems with the reporting. Yet I see no clarifications, redactions, or anybody even trying to clear up the mess that quite frankly feels like targeting. I get why they are targeting Trump after the things Trump said about them. But once everybody stoops to the same level... I don't feel like there is anybody worth listening to.
- comex 9y agoTrump admitted, in that NBC interview, that disliking the Russia investigation was at least part of his motivation to fire Comey. That doesn't mean that firing him was actually sufficient to stop the investigation. To stop the FBI's investigation, Trump would have to nominate a strong ally as the next FBI director, and Congress would have to confirm them. Getting Congress to confirm a partisan nominee would be tricky to start with, and much harder with the media furor. Separately from (but complementary to) the FBI investigation, there's the question of a special prosecutor, which can be appointed either by Congress (making them part of the legislative branch and independent from the executive branch), or by the Justice Department (which is nominally under the president's authority, but only in the sense that Trump could fire Rosenstein and cause an even bigger shitstorm). The latter is what just happened. January 24th is when the FBI interviewed Flynn. On the same day, anonymous sources told the press that they had found "no evidence of impropriety" in the phone calls - but that's different from the FBI formally closing the investigation. Among other things, it leaked much later (around February 16) that Flynn had falsely told his interviewers that he hadn't discussed sanctions in those calls, whereas the recordings showed that he had. This potentially opened the door to charges of lying to law enforcement. The second round of leaks said that the FBI believed he was trying to be "truthful" and wasn't intentionally lying, so was unlikely to be charged, but again, that's different from formally closing an investigation. Even now, the broader investigation into Trump-Russia ties continues, and Flynn remains a part of that investigation.
- cloudboyz 9y ago>I had a hard time swallowing that a thing like that hinged on 1 person at the FBI because it didn't... Trump is literally that big of an idiot. >But once everybody stoops to the same level, now I don't feel like there is anybody worth listening to. It's really something truly amazing to see "both sides are equally bad" given that we have a traitor for a President, a GOP and Congress that is happy to look the other way as much as possible.
- R_haterade 9y agoYikes. >Trump is literally that big of an idiot. This line again. I'll believe it when I see it. So far I think he's played everything very well, and that started with his choice of opponent. >It's really something truly amazing to see "both sides are equally bad" given that we have a traitor for a President, a GOP and Congress that is happy to look the other way as much as possible. You sound like a republican in 2009. For heaven's sake just listen to yourself for a moment. I guess what goes around, comes around.
- gobengo 9y agoDid you click the link? The article refers to former FBI Director Robert Mueller, not Comey.
- DungFu 9y agoreading article content is hard
- dang 9y agoPlease post civilly and substantively, or not at all.
- milquetoastaf 9y agoTrump DID fire Comey to stop an investigation. Turns out that you can actually have multiple investigations ongoing, including ones done by Congress that Trump can't just fire away. >I simply cannot keep up with the 180 narrative flips going on in the media right now. It's almost like the real world is a complicated place where there are many different versions of a story
- jtedward 9y agoGaslighting example above.
- fictioncircle 9y agoIts Mueller, not Comey, who is a staunch Republican who was appointed by Bush. And then offered to fall on his sword for Bush during various domestic wiretapping scandals. Personally, I wouldn't trust anyone that partisan to investigate Republicans. Honestly, I fully expect him to come back with a handful of middlemen + Flynn and nothing touches any elected Republicans. Not because its true, but because its his marching orders.
- MrZongle2 9y agoSo, what happens if this investigation under Mueller, who was FBI Director under the Bush (43) and Obama administrations.... ultimately finds that no laws were broken? Because in a truly impartial investigation, this is a possible outcome. Will these results be accepted, or are we off for another round of whatever the last 6+ months of daily outrage can be called?
- fictioncircle 9y ago> Will these results be accepted, or are we off for another round of whatever the last 6+ months of daily outrage can be called? Mueller is a partisan who offered to fall on his sword to provide Bush Jr political cover during a scandal. They needed to appoint someone genuinely neutral instead of someone like that. Lol.
- MrZongle2 9y agoMueller was asked to stay on as head of the FBI by President Obama, and served in the post all the way to 2013. If you're going to accuse him of partisanship, by all means post some citations.
- fictioncircle 9y ago> Mueller was asked to stay on as head of the FBI by President Obama, and served in the post all the way to 2013. I'm aware. You seem to believe it means something more than Obama didn't have any major scandals to worry about that involved the FBI. > If you're going to accuse him of partisanship, by all means post some citations. He is a registered Republican that backed the vast majority of their programs that were later found unconstitutional. He only ever pushed back when it involved Bush trying to get a guy in a hospital bed to sign an order overturning one small portion of it. There isn't any way to "prove" someone is a partisan to people's satisfaction if the man's career doesn't speak for itself already.
- MrZongle2 9y agoThe man's career can say many things. To quote the Wikipedia article on him: "In May 2011, President Obama asked Director Mueller to continue at the helm of the FBI for two additional years beyond his normal 10-year term, which was expiring on September 4, 2011." and "Director Mueller, along with Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey, threatened to resign from office in March 2004 if the White House overruled a Department of Justice finding that domestic wiretapping without a court warrant was unconstitutional. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft denied his consent to attempts by White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales to waive the Justice Department ruling and permit the domestic warrantless eavesdropping program to proceed. On March 12, 2004, President George W. Bush gave his support to changes in the program sufficient to satisfy the concerns of Mueller, Ashcroft and Comey." and "After leaving the FBI in 2013, Mueller served a one-year term as consulting professor and the Arthur and Frank Payne Distinguished Lecturer at Stanford University where he focused on issues related to cyber-security. He gave a speech and Q&A on March 8, 2017 at Anderson University, where he stated, "For the bureau, one of the most important things is integrity." The layman who reads such an account of his career would be well-justified in asking how you have reached your conclusion, because the above would indicate that Mueller is recognized as a man of integrity by Presidents from both political parties. So I say again: if you're going to accuse him of partisanship, by all means post some citations.
- mstank 9y agoI know this is not tech related but I really wish it would surface to the HN front page. HN is by far the most intelligible and thoughtful comment section for news I've come across. There is a gaping hole in moderated discussions for these topics.
- ReligiousFlames 9y agoMaybe there needs to be a separate political HN site with the same login so people whom want to engage can do so and others can opt-out? Say: https://political.news.ycombinator.com https://political.news.ycombinator.com Also, any stories deemed mostly political can just be moved there instead of being censored/shutdown with flagged and reserve flagged for truly nonstories and spam.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- pvg 9y agoThese stories (current news-of-the-day stories) have been offtopic pretty much forever so it's hard to see how they are being 'censored'.
- mstank 9y agoHeavy moderation is key, whether by the mods or community. Having a whole political channel to moderate isn't worth the resources for YC. It's an opportunity a startup. Think of what Quora did to Q&A sites like Yahoo Answers. A startup that can deliver a higher-level of discussion but for politics and current events.
- milquetoastaf 9y agoYou clearly have never read any political comments on this site. Just look at the Chelsea Manning comments for a look at how "intelligible" and "thoughtful" the community is
- mstank 9y ago
- mrtri 9y agowake up its showbiz to distract the sheeps. same old divide and conquer trick. Putin is just playing his controlled opposition role for the NWO banking cabal. Why Putin was named Man of the Year 2015 in Israel? because he supports Syria? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evKgpSjzgBw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evKgpSjzgBw find out who financed the Bolshevic revolution, and benefit from cold war.