Dear Comey Haters Who Are Now Irate That He Got Fired: Shut Up Already!
So Trump fired FBI director James Comey. OMG! REALLY!?? NO WAY!! That's TERRIBLE! I'm TERRIFIED (that last one is an actual quote). This news is only a big deal if, frankly, you're an idiot, and there are lots of those in the Washington political establishment and the US liberal media.
Some facts to remember:
1) Despite what your brain has been ceaselessly force-fed by the US media for 5 months, there is no evidence that Trump has any dubious or illegal links with Russia. And Russia did not 'hack the US elections'. Clinton lost because she's a crook and a majority of voting Americans knew it. If there was any rigging of the election last year, it was likely to give extra votes to Clinton to make it look like the country is 'divided'.
2) Comey was not fired because he was leading the investigation into Trump's ties with Russia and was getting close to revealing the evidence leading to impeachment proceedings. If that were true, Trump would likely have gotten wind of it and the very last thing you'd want to do when someone had real evidence against you is fire them and let them find out by reading the news. That would not stop them revealing their evidence (which is the case with Comey who has been asked to testify before the Senate as a private citizen) and would likely just make them even more inclined to screw you to the wall.
In fact, the decision to fire Comey only came after James Clapper testified under oath that he had seen no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion. In other words, Trump probably fired Comey because there were no ties - obviously - and that gave him the opportunity to do what he wanted to do: fire Comey with a relatively clean conscience.
Last year when Comey twice halfheartedly revealed some tidbits about Clinton's criminality he proved himself to be a man who does not understand the folly of trying to sit between two stools. A recent poll suggests that Comey's announcements at that time had little or no effect on the outcome of the election (contrary to the paranoid ravings of Hillary Clinton). So while Comey really should have revealed everything the Bureau has on Clinton in order that she be rightfully prosecuted (the Obama-appointed Justice Deptartment was obviously not inclined to do their job on that score), he can be forgiven for not wanting to go down in history as the man who provoked a constitutional crisis by dumping one candidate out of the race at the 11th hour.
Then again, there is some truth to the claim that Comey was fired because he had recently asked for more resources to pursue the Russia-Trump links investigation, just not in the way it is being spun by the US media. Comey was fired because he was planning on pursuing a case against Trump based on unfounded allegations for which there is no evidence, and never will be. The only possible result of such a farce would be more ridiculous innuendo as we saw earlier this year with the dodgy 'Russian dossier' and another feckless attempt to elevate Trump's 'crimes' from wearing badly-applied foundation and not being presidential enough, to treason, or some other legally actionable accusation.
So rather than learn from his experience last year, Comey appears to have thought it a good idea to go for a repeat performance and appear to 'impartially' serve two masters. In the current political climate in the USA, that was never going to work. Either the anti-Trump camp/deep state would have condemned him for not going far enough when he halfheartedly dished the dirt, or Trump would have tired of the silly game and kicked him to the curb.
The fact that Trump chose to ditch Comey one day before the planned meeting with Lavrov at the White House was a pretty clear explication of the subtext here. Trump has business to do with Russia, honest-to-god business free from the ridiculous cold war ideological bias of the 'deep state' nutbags (as Lavrov recently noted). Comey's removal seems to be a message to those who think they can hobble Trump for the next four years with inane accusations about his links to Russia. The message being, think again, idiots!
An established web-based essayist and print author, Quinn has been writing incisive editorials for Sott.net for over 10 years. His articles have appeared on many alternative news sites and he has been interviewed on several internet radio shows and has also appeared on Iranian Press TV. His articles can also be found on his personal blog JoeQuinn.net.