Comey Serves Up a Nothingburger with Fries and Slaw

The Comey hearing. OK, I watched the damn thing. I am trying to avoid reading the post-hearing professional punditry so that I won't be influenced by the "experts" as I offer my own amateur punditry.

I think Comey damaged his reputation further (here, here, here) and came off as a cry baby with seriously hurt feelings. More important, however, at least to my mind, the whole thing was over in the first few minutes of Comey being questioned.

OK, my checklist:

--The President does have the right to fire the FBI director;

--The President, although he has the authority to do so, did not try to halt the investigation into General Flynn and "Collusion with Russia";

--The President told the truth when he said Comey had told him that Trump was not a target of the investigation;

--The President told Comey to continue with the investigation as he wanted to know if any of his "satellites" had done something wrong;

--The investigation continues even without Comey.

So what the hell is this all about? Where's the crime? Where's the scandal? Waiter, I would like a little meat between the bread slices, please.

Now there was a big nothingburger when it comes to "Trump scandals," but there also was a large order of fries and a side of slaw thrown on our plates a bit later.

First, as many of us suspected, Comey was the leaker of the Comey "memos." He admitted it, saying he did it to provoke the creation of a Special Counsel probe into the Russia issue. That is outrageous and helps explain this ex-Director's lax attitude towards leaks. Once he wrote those memos as FBI Director, those memos did not belong to him; they belonged to the United States Government and are subject to the appropriate USG classification and use regulations. The ex-Director should be charged.

Second, he casually acknowledged what many of us also had suspected, to wit, that former AG Lynch did try to interfere in the FBI investigation into the Clinton email scandal. Lynch needs to be subpoenaed, investigated, and, if appropriate, charged with obstruction of justice. Comey's own lax behavior in the wake of the Lynch attempt to obstruct justice should also be investigated, and he should face charges.

What comes out negative for President Trump?

Simply put, he got hoisted by his and his staff's inexperience with the slippery oily ways of Washington.

As a man who grew up in the construction/real estate business, mostly in the brutal New York market, Trump knows how to deal with sharks. He knows that, in the end, 99% of the time, a deal can be struck in which both parties emerge as winners. "Come on. We're alone now. What's your bottom line?" DC is different. DC is a town of lawyers. The DC sharks tend to be wily but cowardly; they hide behind lawyers, the endless reams of legal code that choke the town, and press leaks. Everything is quasi-legal and any "slip" an outrage to be exploited by the progressive media.

You need a lawyer to do almost anything; no conversation should be held without a lawyer present. In the DC environment, Trump expressing his wish that Flynn be spared further embarrassment and prosecution after already having been abruptly dismissed from his job as National Security Advisor, turns into a lawyer gabfest. Did the President try to interfere with any investigation into Flynn? Not that I know. So he expressed his wish to see the guy not be slimed anymore, so what?

This has to stop. We have people out of work; jihadis running amok; the Norks threatening to pop nukes over Honolulu and Okinawa; the Chinese paving over the South China Sea; and Putin laughing his head off as we run around chasing our tails with these idiotic scandals.

To quote PM May, "Enough is enough!"