Recusal because of being close to a witness? Good precedent to follow.
Spread this everywhere!
From the New York Times:The F.B.I. director will not play a role in the inquiry into Decker College, the Kentucky school once run by William F. Weld, because the director and Mr. Weld, a Republican candidate for governor, are friends and former colleagues, an F.B.I. spokesman said yesterday. The New York Post reported the decision by Robert Mueller, the director, yesterday. The New York Democratic Party had asked that Mr. Mueller recuse himself, according to a party spokesman. Mr. Weld has not been accused of any wrongdoing involving Decker, which declared bankruptcy last fall amid allegations of fraud. |
Hillary Clinton requested that FBI Dir. Mueller deliver highly enriched uranium to the Russians in 2009 in secret ‘plane-side tarmac meeting’
New Clinton-Mueller Russian uranium ties surface in a new Wikileaks release. Past dealings with the Russians were also mentioned in the cable.As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton facilitated the transfer a highly enriched uranium (HEU) previously confiscated by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) during a 2006 “nuclear smuggling sting operation involving one Russian national and several Georgian accomplices,” a newly leaked classified cable shows. So-called “background” information was provided in the cable which gave vague details on a 2006 nuclear smuggling sting operation in which the U.S. government took possession of some HEU previously owned by the Russians. The secret “action request,” dated Aug. 17, 2009, was sent out by Secretary of State Clinton and was addressed to the United States Ambassador to Georgia Embassy Tbilisi, the Russian Embassy, and Ambassador John Beyrle. It proposed that FBI Director Robert Mueller be the one that personally conduct the transfer a 10-gram sample of HEU to Russian law enforcement sources during a secret “plane-side” meeting on a “tarmac” in the early fall of 2009. The FBI Director was originally scheduled to ‘return’ a sample from the DOE stockpile to the Russians in April but the trip was postponed until September 21. Paragraph number 6 of the leaked cable confirms Dir. Mueller’s Sept. 21 flight to Moscow.
“(S/Rel Russia) Action request: Embassy Moscow is requested to alert at the highest appropriate level the Russian Federation that FBI Director Mueller plans to deliver the HEU sample once he arrives to Moscow on September 21. Post is requested to convey information in paragraph 5 with regard to chain of custody, and to request details on Russian Federation’s plan for picking up the material. Embassy is also requested to reconfirm the April 16 understanding from the FSB verbally that we will have no problem with the Russian Ministry of Aviation concerning Mueller’s September 21 flight clearance.” But possible even more shocking is the fact that the State Department wanted the transfer of the HEU to take place on an “airport tarmac” which is rather reminisce of the infamous Loretta Lynch/Bill Clinton meeting which occurred on a Phoenix, Arizona, tarmac back in June of 2016. Past dealings with the Russians were also mentioned in the cable, signifying that previous deals have taken place. |
For people that claimed that his “memos” he wrote were his own property, he signed an agreement that specifically states otherwise and gives up any rights he has to personal documents created in his duties:
From The Federalist:During his testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday, former FBI director James Comey revealed that he was the source of leaked memos about his conversations with Donald Trump surrounding the Russia investigation. Comey explained that he shared the memos with his friend, a professor at Columbia University, who then shared them with the New York Times, actions that may violate the FBI’s own employee agreement. “My judgment was I needed to get [the memos] out into the public square,” Comey said. “So I asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter. I didn’t do it myself for a variety of reasons, but I asked him to because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel.” By his own account, it seems that Comey may not have followed the agency’s employee agreement, which places numerous restrictions on the use of information or documents acquired during an individual’s employment by the FBI. Paragraphs 2, 3, and 4 of the FBI employment agreement appear to cover Comey’s distribution of content he says he created on government property in his capacity as a government official: Paragraph 2 states that all materials acquired in connection with an employee’s official duties are property of the U.S. government and that such materials must be surrendered to the FBI upon an employee’s separation from the agency. Paragraph 3 states that employees are prohibited from releasing “any information acquired by virtue of my official employment” to “unauthorized individual[s] without prior official written authorization by the FBI.” Paragraph 4 of the agreement requires FBI employees, prior to disclosing or publishing information acquired during their employment, to submit the information to FBI authorities for review to determine whether it is authorized for public release. So if Comey followed protocol and surrendered all government property, including the memos he produced in his capacity as an FBI employee, it would have been impossible for him to provide the memos to his friend. The fact that he was able to provide hard copies of the memos to both his friend and special counsel Robert Mueller suggests that Comey did not surrender them to authorities as required by the FBI employment agreement. Page two of the agreement lists the types of information disclosures which are strictly prohibited. Included in the list of information that may not be released without prior written approval by the FBI is “information that relates to any sensitive operational details or the substantive merits of any ongoing or open investigation or case.” While the agreement states that unauthorized disclosure of classified information is a violation of the contract, information does not have to be classified in order to be prohibited from unauthorized disclosure. Comey claims that his memos were unclassified. Comey’s claim that it would not have been proper to publicly disclose that Trump was not a target of any FBI investigation because the investigation was ongoing and facts could change flies in the face of his decision to provide to his friends records of his meetings about the investigation with the president. If he could not publicly note that Trump was not a target of an ongoing investigation, then why was he able to release FBI records related to that investigation to his friends for the purpose of having those details leaked to the public via the news media? In light of the FBI’s prohibition on publicly sharing documents or information related to ongoing investigations absent prior written authorization, Comey’s dual explanations make little sense. The FBI employment agreement states that violating any of the included terms may result in termination, civil liability, revocation of security clearances, or even criminal sanctions. By Bre Payton. She is a staff writer at The Federalist. Follow her on Twitter. |
