The possibility that Donald committed a federal crime by lying 2 Comey ab his connections 2 Russia

[Madam45for2923]

Did one phone call by Trump expand the investigation?

That is what Noah Feldman of Bloomberg argues in Comey Opens Door to Investigate Trump Dossier, which has a subtitle of “It's not clear the special counsel had authority to investigate the president personally. He does now.”

For background on Feldman, his bio on that page notes that he
is a professor of constitutional and international law at Harvard University and was a clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter.
Thus one may want to pay close attention to his legal analysis.

He begins by writing

Hiding in plain sight in former FBI Director James Comey’s testimony Thursday before the Senate Intelligence Committee is a potentially major new avenue for special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russia-related crimes: the possibility that President Donald Trump committed a federal crime by lying to Comey about his connections to Russia and activities on his 2013 visit there.

The key on this is the phone call where Trump, unsolicited, calls Comey and says that he had nothing to do with hookers — remember the allegation in the Steel dossier.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/6/9/1670236/-Did-one-phone-call-by-Trump-expand-the-investigation?detail=emaildkre

[Madam45for2923]

1. Hiding in plain sight in former FBI Director James Comeys testimony Thursday before the Senate Inte

Hiding in plain sight in former FBI Director James Comey’s testimony Thursday before the Senate Intelligence Committee is a potentially major new avenue for special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russia-related crimes: the possibility that President Donald Trump committed a federal crime by lying to Comey about his connections to Russia and activities on his 2013 visit there.

The key on this is the phone call where Trump, unsolicited, calls Comey and says that he had nothing to do with hookers — remember the allegation in the Steel dossier.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/6/9/1670236/-Did-one-phone-call-by-Trump-expand-the-investigation?detail=emaildkre

[Madam45for2923]

2. Lying to Comey Lying to the FBI Lying to the Feds.

[Igel]

3. One has to ask a question, though.

If Trump can be investigated because he lied to Comey, why is it that Comey couldn't start the investigation?

Because he'd have to recuse himself, and that wouldn't be legal? Hardly. Because he'd have to recuse himself and lose control? Possibly, but then the easy inference is that Comey's more interested in running things than pursuing law enforcement.

I was once asked about foreign contacts when I applied to work for the NSA. I listed a couple. Signed the form, officially under oath. Went home, waited for the official background check to take place.

By the time I was being interviewed in person far from Maryland I had realized I'd forgotten to disclose a raft of such contacts. I'd been a student, a language student. I'd worked with refugees from Cambodia and Vietnam, by then hostile countries. I'd been a frequent patron of a store that had the North American contract with a Soviet governmental agency and was staffed by Russians. In coursework I'd rubbed shoulders and even went to bars with foreign nationals, some fellow students, but one prof was a Cuban-American and another had fled Spain because he'd fought on the Communist side in the civil war. I'd attended a simultaneous interpretation conference at Georgetown with students from heaven only knows how many students, and had even been to the UN a few times, once interacting with the interpretation staff as an interpretation student. The horrors! All those meetings with foreign representatives, and unreported! How'd they ever be able to clear me?

I told the interviewers about these contacts and they looked intensely bored. They didn't care. Teaching a boat person basic terms in a fast food joint, asking a clerk where Saltykov-Shchedrin's works were located, or discussing interpretation careers with a UN staffer or having a Cuban-American desk mate were not what they were after. They had clear purposes, a clear rationale, and were not specifically done to meet with these people. The only evidence that these were bad would have been suspicion. (Now, not having a firm, ready answer to the question, "If you translated something that indicated an imminent massive Warsaw Pact attack on Germany and you knew that the only possible response to keep the Soviets from overwhelming NATO troops with massive casualties was a nuclear first strike, would you immediately notify your superior?" was a big sticking point. Scores of incidental foreign contacts, most of which would be assumed to be part of my routine business as a Russian major in the US or avid volunteer? Not so much.)

[Madam45for2923]

4. Comey did not want to stop the other major investigation & knew everything would connect