June 7, 2017

here's why comey wouldn't tell the world trump was under investigation

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/06/07/heres-why-james-comey-wouldnt-tell-the-world-that-trump-wasnt-under-investigation/


*snip*

I explained that we had briefed the leadership of Congress on exactly which individuals we were investigating and that we had told those Congressional leaders that we were not personally investigating President Trump. I reminded him I had previously told him that. He repeatedly told me, “We need to get that fact out.” (I did not tell the President that the FBI and the Department of Justice had been reluctant to make public statements that we did not have an open case on President Trump for a number of reasons, most importantly because it would create a duty to correct, should that change.)

We put the critical part there in bold: Comey didn’t want to create “a duty to correct.”

What does that mean? We spoke with Joseph Lewis, who spent 27 years with the bureau before retiring in 2004 as deputy assistant director for the FBI’s organized crime branch.

“Once you make that a story to the public,” Lewis said, “if it turns out that it’s not accurate or not true, then depending on how public you went with it, then you have to go back and try to clean things up.” In other words, if Comey said publicly that Trump was not under investigation, then if Trump were to become a focus of that investigation, Comey would feel an obligation to make that change public as well.

*snip*

June 7, 2017

Inside trump's anger and impatience, and his sudden decison to fire Comey

Very interesting time line.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-trumps-anger-and-impatience-prompted-him-to-fire-the-fbi-director/2017/05/10/d9642334-359c-11e7-b373-418f6849a004_story.html?utm_term=.b8e720f173cd

*snip*

trump had long questioned Comey’s loyalty and judgment, and was infuriated by what he viewed as the director’s lack of action in recent weeks on leaks from within the federal government. By last weekend, he had made up his mind: Comey had to go. (well, that and the Russia thing, according to his interview with Lester Holt.)

*snip*

trump was angry that Comey would not support his baseless claim that President Barack Obama had his campaign offices wiretapped. trump was frustrated when Comey revealed in Senate testimony the breadth of the counterintelligence investigation into Russia’s effort to sway the 2016 U.S. presidential election. And he fumed that Comey was giving too much attention to the Russia probe and not enough to investigating leaks to journalists.

*snip*

In the weeks leading up to Comey’s firing, trump administration officials had repeatedly urged the FBI to more aggressively pursue leak investigations, according to people familiar with the discussions. Administration officials sometimes sought to push the FBI to prioritize leak probes over the Russia interference case, and at other times urged the bureau to investigate disclosures of information that was not classified or highly sensitive and therefore did not constitute crimes, these people said.

*snip*

Trump’s team did not have a full-fledged communications strategy for how to announce and then explain the decision. As Trump, who had retired to the residence to eat dinner, sat in front of a television watching cable news coverage of Comey’s firing, he noticed another flaw: Nobody was defending him.

June 6, 2017

DeVos: "It is not the education dept's. job to protect LGBTQ students."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/betsy-devos-lgbtq-students_us_5936c878e4b013c4816b4ebc

U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said Tuesday that her agency would not give federal funds to private schools that defy federal antidiscrimination laws. However, she suggested it is not the Department of Education’s job to prevent discrimination against students in cases in which federal antidiscrimination laws are murky, such as with LGBTQ students.

DeVos took part in a contentious hearing before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education on Tuesday morning. There, Democrats and Republicans hammered the secretary on the administration’s proposed budget, which would cut billions of dollars in funding for public education while increasing money to support school choice programs. The budget directs some of this funding toward helping students attend private and religious schools.

While under questioning from Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), DeVos wouldn’t definitively say whether private schools receiving federal funds would be punished for religious discrimination or discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer students. She maintained that these schools would be required to follow federal antidiscrimination laws, but said the Department of Education would not be issuing any directives beyond that.