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hroughout his election campaign, and even on the day of his Presidential inauguration, Donald Trump was publicly at war with much of the bourgeois press and the US ‘security’ services. As late as 2015 it would have been unthinkable to suggest that an elected US President would, on the day of officially taking office and during the inauguration ceremony itself, declare that he did not trust the American security services – and also to state that the American press creates ‘fake news’! Yet that is exactly what happened. Here was the elected rep-resentative of US imperialism ripping off some of the masks of bourgeois ‘democracy’! But, alas, much of the ‘left’ press around the world did not grasp, and still have not grasped, the significance of this. Someone taking the highest office in imperialism striking out at two key pillars of that very system is not just a spat: it is the epitome of the ‘loose cannon’ – as dangerous to those he represents, the 0.1%, as he is to any perceived enemy. This is partly why we have said that Trump was not and is not wanted in that role by the 0.1% who run US imperialism. He also, just as heinously from the view of the 0.1%, declared that he would not willingly go to war against Russia but would seek a peaceful coexistence with it, labelling both NATO and the EU obsolete! The 0.1%’s choice for President was always Hillary – the bloody butcher of Libya – Clinton. She had signalled loud and clear that she would zealously continue to throw her energies into these murderous ‘wars’ that would bring them into armed conflict with Russia as soon as she possibly could.
Unbelievably, the leaders of the American bourgeoisie and their ‘security’ and media forces, complete with all their up-to-date, state-of-the-art devices for controlling the masses and their vote-counting machines, were unable to stop Trump from being elected. Since then, efforts have been made to end the term of office of Donald Trump prematurely. For example, George Soros, architect of many ‘colour’ revolutions around the globe, funded and tried to direct various liberal and ‘left’ groups out onto the streets in an effort to create an atmosphere where Trump could be removed to restore ‘public order’ but, although many ‘leftists’ were prepared to demonstrate on the streets to try to have the war-criminal Hillary Clinton crowned in Trump’s place, this was in the end a dismal failure. Since that avenue closed, various legal traps and snares have been brought into play, and this is where the former Director of the FBI, James Comey, is taking centre stage.
Having only last year been accused of by his actions assisting Trump to win the presidential election, he is now being wheeled out to level accusations against Trump in substantiation of the wholly fictitious allegation that Russian hackers, in league with Trump, interfered in the US election to help Trump win.
With regard to the accusation that he improperly assisted Trump to win the election, the case is based on the following facts: In July 2016, Comey, who had been appointed head of the FBI directly by the then President, Obama, announced that an investigation into Mrs Clinton’s use of a private email server would be closed without prosecution, a move that drew a lot of flak, with accusations that he was in the Democrats’ pocket.
Then Wikileaks hacked into the Democratic National Convention’s emails exposing the fact that the Convention, which was supposed to be neutral about who would be the Democratic candidate for the presidency, was in fact engaged in plots and plans to undermine Bernie Sanders’ candidature. Clinton’s campaign, which was supposed to be a glitzy and triumphal formality, had run into serious trouble earlier on when fellow Democratic Party hopeful to be the party’s candidate, Bernie Sanders, began pulling in a lot of support with his popular liberal policies. The Clinton ‘team’ and the officials of the (supposedly neutral) Democratic National Convention (DNC) began spreading smears, half-truths and some downright lies about Sanders and his supporters through the emails that in July 2016 Wikileaks (NOT the Russians) made public.
“On the eve of the [Democratic] party’s convention in Philadelphia 20,000 emails were made public by Wikileaks showing supposedly neutral senior party officials tried to undermine Mr Sanders’s insurgent left-wing campaign by publicly portraying him as an atheist” (Nick Allen, ‘Hillary Clinton faces mass dissent over “dirty tricks” on Bernie Sanders’, Daily Telegraph, 25 July 2016). Other similar manoeuvres were also apparent from, or being considered in, these emails.
Enraged at being found out, Hillary Clinton screamed that it was the Russians who had hacked her emails so that they could get ‘their man’ into the White House, this being the original source of the fabrication that Donald Trump was being pushed on the American people as their president by hostile Russian forces. The fabrication was designed to distract attention from Clinton’s electoral improprieties, but for all the heavy guns of the bourgeois propaganda machine firing off this message on her behalf, a sufficient number of the US electorate were clued up enough to recognise her blatant dishonesty – as a result of which she went on to lose the election to Trump.
In the meantime, however, although Comey held out as long as he could against taking action against Hillary Clinton on this impropriety, he finally in October, a mere 11 days before the election, surprisingly announced that the FBI had reopened the inquiry following the discovery of new emails. This, of course, had Hillary and the Democrats screaming that he was doing the Republicans’ dirty work. But then, with just two days to go before the election, he did another about turn and wrote to congressmen and women to say that the investigation was once again to be “no longer be pursued”.
It is ironic that Hillary and her supporters, who had been exposed as being engaged in attempts improperly to influence the choice of Democratic presidential candidate, then in the final stage of the Presidential election, when it became clear that Trump was a serious contender for the post, unblushingly accused Russia of interfering in the election through the same kind of smears, etc., that they had previously used against Sanders! You couldn’t make it up! There is probably some truth in Trump’s twitter that: "The Democrats made up and pushed the Russian story as an excuse for running a terrible campaign." It can also be a strategy for pushing Trump to take a harder line than he probably wants against Russia, i.e., a line more to the liking of the US ruling class, in order not to give anyone the chance of labelling him soft on Putin. Although Trump, since his election, has rowed back on his campaign promises, the ruling imperialist circles in the US can never be sure, in view of his volatility, that he will consistently be on message.
So anyway, Comey, the poor hard-done-by civil servant who was only doing his job until sacked by a vindictive President, has now testified before the ‘Senate select committee on intelligence’ after swearing an oath to tell the truth, throwing out hint after hint that Trump and those close to him were deeply involved with the Russians. Without offering a shred of evidence he stated "There should be no fuzz in this whatsoever. The Russians interfered in the election." Yet, strangely for someone making such an unsubstantiated claim, he also said that there was no evidence that Russia had successfully altered any votes! This may have brought a smile and a headshake to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who sagely observed "Take a globe, spin it and point your finger at any spot, there’s surely American interests and interference there!” Putin’s logic cannot be denied as every time the USA invades a country, deposes a leader or government and installs puppets compliant to US imperialist wants and needs, that is interference, is it not? Every time that US ‘security’ agencies set up groups in other countries with cash, arms and world-wide publicity to bring down a sitting government, that is interference, is it not? To kidnap the president of a country that is supposed to be a US ally (Panama’s Manuel Noriega), that is interference, is it not? When then President Obama advised Britons to vote ‘remain’ in the Brexit referendum, that was interference, was it not? For the NSA to spy on the world…but enough, back to the Comey testimony.
He implied that further investigation of Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, may find more links to Russia than have already been ‘established’ – but again no substantiation of either the ‘established’ links or whatever these further ‘links’ might be. It may well be that Sessions will have some damaging things to say about Trump re Russia as he too has now fallen out with his boss. What Comey said about Sessions under the protection of speaking to the Senate select committee on intelligence was; “Our judgment, as I recall, was that he [Sessions] was very close and inevitably going to recuse himself for a variety of reasons” and further “We were also aware of facts that I can’t discuss in an open setting that would make his continued engagement in a Russia-related investigation problematic.” This will put a lot of pressure on Sessions either to fall in line or risk being a fall guy.
James Comey was regarded apparently as a ‘canny operator’ and has moved in the highest political and legal circles for some three decades. When he was US attorney for the South District of New York, he had a reputation as someone who wasn’t scared to go after the wealthy and powerful.
Comey left the Department of Justice for the private sector in 2005, landing lucrative jobs at Lockheed Martin, and then with the hedge fund Bridgewater Associates. He was for a short while a fellow at Columbia Law School until he received a call from President Barack Obama who offered him the directorship of the FBI. This is the man who reported to the Senate select committee that he remembered a dinner at the White House in January where Trump demanded his loyalty. “I could be wrong, but my common sense told me what’s going on here is that he’s looking to get something in exchange for granting my request to stay in the job” he said, painting a picture of himself as something akin to a frightened doe facing a raging lion. His statement included this gem: "I took the opportunity to implore the attorney general (Jeff Sessions) to prevent any future direct communication between the president and me." And further "I was honestly concerned that he [Mr Trump] might lie about the nature of our meeting." We are left wondering why such a shrinking violet was put in charge of the FBI! But for Comey, of course, his testimony was a cross between taking a political side, justifying his highly improper and illegal leaking of notes of his meetings with Trump to the press through a third party, and appealing to an employment tribunal about a bullying boss.
One of the meetings that Comey had with Trump, and of which he now admits he leaked details, was when Trump, according to Comey, said, “I need loyalty, I expect loyalty.” Comey continued “I didn’t move, speak, or change my facial expression in any way during the awkward silence that followed. We simply looked at each other in silence." Trump is also accused by Comey of asking for the investigation of Michael Flynn regarding alleged links with Russian interference in the elections to be dropped and when this didn’t happen of sacking Comey. Trump still says he sacked Comey because he dropped charges against Hillary Clinton.
Comey also admits that he did on three occasions tell Trump that he personally wasn’t under investigation from the FBI over links to ‘Russian interference’ in the US elections, but he has now inferred that this may no longer be the case.
All in all, one has to agree with Michael Scheuer, writing for Information Clearing House on 11 June 2017 (‘Comey shows Americans that law does not apply to the élite’) when he notes:
“James Comey admits to taking official government documents home and then giving them to the NY Times; he directly contradicts his 3 May 2017, under-oath testimony; he publicly conspires with that stooge of a Special Counsel Robert Mueller to stage-manage his testimony; he refused to tell Americans that their president was not colluding with the Russians; he coordinated his public language with Attorney General Lynch to please Clinton, protect that criminal, and fix the 2016 election; and, just after the hearing, is reported to have been offered a $10 million advance/payoff from a New York publisher for a book on Trump.
“The Senate committee, almost to a man and woman, tried to aid Comey’s lie-filled, anti-republic [sic] testimony against Trump. Only Senators Risch, Cornyn, and Rubio did the enormously easy job of demonstrating that Comey is nothing but a lying, two-bit Clinton-whore…”
Before we go any further, let it be understood that we are not here to garner support for Donald Trump: his intentions are to enrich himself as much as possible and grab a bit of ‘glory’ for posterity, much like any other US president or wannabe president. His interest to us is that he is the loose cannon that may or may not do what his real masters in the 0.1% want. He is as capable of scuppering the imperialist war plans as he is of carrying them out. He is also locked in this war of accusations and counter-accusations with Comey, and probably others before long as they try to bring him down, and he hits back at all and sundry. This makes serious analysis, especially among our American comrades, vital, as the combatants are allowing everyone a glimpse behind the imperialist scenes to vistas that are usually kept well hidden. The whole of the imperialist method of rule is exposed and this must be brought to the eyes of all workers, but especially of US workers who will be the agents of the eventual overthrow of US imperialism. Meanwhile, the screams of “liar!” and “perjurer!” fly back and forth.
In the words of Frank Luntz, a Republican consultant and pollster, “If you’re a Trump fan, you think Comey broke the law by leaking documents. If you’re a Trump foe, you think there’s enough to impeach the president. There’s something here for everyone and that means everyone is hurt. It’s so bad for American democracy.” For American democracy read American imperialism, and if it’s bad for that than it’s good for the rest of the world!
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