Mike Pence is neck-deep in Donald Trump's James Comey mess

[DonViejo]

The veep may look like a tangential figure in the administration, but he's in the middle of this deepening crisis

HEATHER DIGBY PARTON

This has been a week that makes Democrats feel as if the world might right itself once again. President Donald Trump’s abrupt firing of FBI director James Comey — supposedly because of his unfair treatment of Hillary Clinton in the private email server case — was so laughably ludicrous on its face that the immediate reaction was that the Republican line of defense would finally break down and he would finally be subject to serious bipartisan condemnation.

Whether that will actually come to pass remains to be seen. There have been some cracks in the GOP wall but it’s too soon to know how far that will take them. The good news is that Democrats are unanimous in their outrage, even including such normally mild mannered types such as Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, who was ferocious in his criticism. That is an important element of any congressional action and it’s never something you can count on with the Democratic Party.

Press secretary Sean Spicer told the media on Tuesday night that the firing originated entirely in the Department of Justice and when a reporter asked if that meant Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein he said, “it was all him.” The next day the deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe and backed up that claim:

It’s real simple. The deputy attorney general . . . made a very strong recommendation. The president followed it, and he made a quick and decisive action to fire James Comey.

Apparently, sometime between that interview and the daily briefing, Rosenstein complained to the White House about being the scapegoat when he hadn’t actually recommended Comey’s firing. Sanders scrambled for an explanation, saying that, actually, Trump had been thinking about dismissing Comey for some time but his thoughts had been validated by Rosenstein’s opinion. Nobody much bought it but she managed to get through two days of briefings insisting that she was making sense.

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http://www.salon.com/2017/05/12/mike-pence-is-neck-deep-in-donald-trumps-james-comey-mess/

[Thomas Hurt]

1. applying the bullshit filter....

Unfiltered: "It’s real simple. The deputy attorney general . . . made a very strong recommendation. The president followed it, and he made a quick and decisive action to fire James Comey."


Filtered: It’s real simple. The bought and paid for deputy attorney general . . . made a very strong recommendation in a last minute ginned up letter to aid in covering up Trump's obstruction of justice. The president asked for it, and he made a quick and decisive action after a 3 month delay to fire James Comey.