What Was The Real Story Arc?

Over less than a week, we've had the release of the Hur tapes, the runup to the Jake Tapper book launch on the coverup of Joe's decline, the reemergence of James Comey, and the astonishing news of Joe Biden's Stage IV prostate cancer. Somehow all these strike me as being tied together, although I'm not completely sure how. Let's start with Comey, who was a key figure in the 2016 election and the first few months of Trump's first term. How did he figure in those events?

The original agreement between Clinton and Obama going back to 2008 was for Obama to take the nomination, the presidency and then eventually support Hillary Clinton’s 2016 election bid. Obama would appoint Clinton to Secretary of State, Hillary would then use her office to build wealth for herself and her family, and then HRC would exit the Dept of State to begin her presidential run.

. . . The FBI [i e, James Comey] was aware of the plan for transition from Obama to Clinton, hence their role in eliminating the threat later presented by the Clinton, as Secretary of State, laptop scandal and the subsequent issues of classified information. Remember, Clinton’s motive as Secretary of State was to sell her position for material wealth; that’s why she used a personal email, maintained her own servers, and generally controlled how her activity could be monitored and tracked.

The problem was that Comey is generally regarded as tilting the 2016 election away from Hillary at a key inflecion point:

Before becoming secretary of state in 2009, Mrs Clinton set up an email server at her home in Chappaqua, New York, that she used for all work and personal emails during her four years in office.

She did not use, or even activate, a state.gov email account, which would have been hosted on servers owned and managed by the US government.

. . . A State Department investigation said her arrangement violated government policy, and FBI boss James Comey said in July 2016 that it was careless but not criminal.

So far, so good, Comey was doing as expected. But then, he went all wobbly:

In a bombshell announcement on 28 October, the FBI said it had found new emails that "appeared to be pertinent" to its investigation.

The emails, including some from top Clinton aide Huma Abedin, were found on a laptop belonging to her estranged husband, former congressman Anthony Weiner.

The revelation angered the Clinton campaign, and Mr Comey came under fire from some Democrats for allegedly interfering in the election.

. . . But in the final days of a heated election campaign, Mr Comey said that after reviewing the newly discovered emails, the FBI had not changed its position that Mrs Clinton should not face criminal charges.

Mr Trump changed his tune, saying Mrs Clinton was "being protected by a rigged system".

According to the link, Hillary thought Comey's dithering cost her the election, although others dispute that this was the factor. Meanwhile, the Trump Russia Collusion hoax, originally developed by the Hillary team for the unsuccessful 2016 campaign, threatened to come back to bite the Democrats once Trump got into the White House. According to the first link above,

President Obama did not orchestrate the Russia Collusion hoax; he facilitated it by not interfering with his administration officials who were assisting Hillary Clinton. This is a very key distinction. President Obama knew what was going on, he was willfully blind as it was carried out. However, the mess and fallout from the extreme lengths his FBI and DOJ officials went eventually represented a threat to Obama.

Robert Mueller and all 19 of his Clinton-aligned Lawfare operatives, were put into place to cover-up the entire mess created within the Russia Collusion operation. Mueller [in 2019] continued the Crossfire Hurricane operation, while the extreme Lawfare strategy was deployed against the Trump administration.

But Comey turned out to be the first victim of the Russia Collusion hoax, primarily due to his continuing tendency to dither:

The FBI director, James Comey, had privately reassured [Trump] that he was not personally under investigation. But on May 3, 2017, when Comey was summoned to Capitol Hill to explain his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, he denied the president the public vindication he’d sought.

Facing curious lawmakers and a captivated American audience, Comey pointedly refused to say whether any members of the Trump campaign were or were not under criminal investigation — including the president himself.

“The Department of Justice has authorized me to confirm” the existence of a broader investigation into potential collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, Comey said. “We’re not going to say another word about it until we’re done.”

. . . Comey was a show-boater, a grandstander, Trump complained to aide Steve Bannon. Three times, Trump lamented, Comey had told him he wasn’t under investigation. And now this.

By that weekend, Trump was at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, crafting a plan to dismiss Comey and dictating language for a draft termination letter to aide Stephen Miller.

Comey's reemergence with the 8647 flap, apparently connected with his own upcoming book launch, reinforces how wrapped up he was in the events of 2016-17, which on one hand brought down the plan for Hillary to succeed Obama in a seamless transition, and on the other set in motion the so-far utterly misguided Lawfare plan to thwart Trump and secure a renewed Democrat presidential dynasty.

One thing that's puzzled me about Comey is although he was only 56 when Trump fired him as FBI Director, his subsequent career has been at best undistinguished. According to Wikipedia,

In the summer of 2017, Comey gave the convocation speech and a series of lectures at Howard University, a historically black university in Washington, D.C., In the fall of 2018, Comey returned to his alma mater, the College of William & Mary, to teach a course on ethical leadership. He became an executive professor in education, a non-tenured position at the College. Comey joined assistant professor Drew Stelljes to teach the course during the 2018–2019 academic year.

. . . Comey is a senior fellow at the Kettering Foundation, an American non-partisan research foundation.

This contrasts with the post-FBI careers of his predecessors Robert Mueller and Louis Freeh, who became partners at law firms, while Freeh consulted extensively as well. Comey appears to rely now on his writing, a notoriously unstable income source. He also gives speeches for pay; he's represented by the Washington Speakers Bureau. But it doesn't seem as though anyone is interested in hiring him as an attorney or a consultant; his reputation for showboating and his track record of unreliability must prevent this.

Consider how his reemergence with the shell message on the beach has brought him lots of publicity but little or no money -- and in fact, it will almost certainly force him to spend money on attorneys. The guy just doesn't seem to be very smart or very competent at handling his own affairs or those of other important people. But he was in many ways present at the creation of the current Democrat strategy. I'll continue with the overall story arc in subsequent posts.