The BBC was pumping out excited, conspiratorial, sensationalist stories about Trump’s sacking of Comey yesterday, even suggesting this smacked of Nixonian intrigue and coverup. Trouble is in all their reporting, on the radio at least, they missed out, funnily enough, the crucial fact that told the lie to their version of events….that Trump sacked Comey after he had misled Congress last week…the BBC were reporting he had been sacked almost at random, out of the blue…they demand to know why Comey hadn’t been sacked when Trump became President, why now? Curious they don’t actually seem interested in the actual answer…even suggesting it is a cover up…
Was it a cover-up?
The abruptness and timing of Mr Comey’s dismissal, to put it mildly, is highly suspicious.
That BBC report even mentions that Comey was up before Congress last week…but fails to mention the crucial fact that he ‘misled’ them…which explains the ‘abruptness’ of the sacking….
Just over a week ago, the FBI director talked about his agency’s investigation into Russian meddling in the US presidential election – and possible Russian ties to the Trump campaign – before a Senate committee.
A crucial fact is missing though, one which the Telegraph kindly shares with us…
James Comey ‘gave wrong information’ to Congress in his testimony about Hillary Clinton’s aides emails
Oh wait…the BBC does actually know that…and has reported it in a website write-up…
The move came as it emerged Mr Comey gave inaccurate information to Congress last week about Mrs Clinton’s emails.
So why has the BBC, including the ‘beauty’ Jon Sopel, otherwise been reporting all day that it is a complete mystery why this sacking came so suddenly when it knows the answer?
Yep, it’s all a mystery to the BBC…
If the dismissal was because of the email investigation, why act now? How the Trump White House answers that question will go a long way toward determining whether the cover-up allegations die down over time.
Why has the BBC not been making much noise about the fact that the Democrats wanted Comey sacked but are now ‘outraged’ at his sacking?…indeed only last week Clinton was blaming Comey for her failure to win the Presidency.
One week ago, Clinton said during a forum that she was “on the way to winning until a combination of Jim Comey’s letter on Oct. 28 and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me but got scared off.”
So was Comey in league with Trump…and Trump in league with the Russians as the BBC suggest? Surely Comey must have been…oh….er…but he was in charge of the investigation into alleged Russian links to Trump’s team [not Trump himself]…so if Clinton thought he was in collusion with Trump/Russians how could he be in charge of such an investigation? Conflict of interest?
Seems the Dems change their stance to suit…and the BBC is quite unconcerned about raising such difficulties solely interested as they are in attacking Trump.
Democrats once blamed Comey; now they’re defending him
The BBC also fails to point out that Comey had been heavily criticised by the professionals in the FBI for not putting Clinton in the dock…hence he then went on to reopen investigations leading to the letter that Clinton blames for her downfall….though she could otherwise have been in prison really.
Is This Why Comey Broke: A Stack Of Resignation Letters From Furious FBI Agents
FBI Agents Say Comey ‘Stood In The Way’ Of Clinton Email Investigation
Mutiny! FBI turning on James Comey?
Traducing Trump always trumps the truth for the BBC. Fake news…the beauty.
And does the sacking of Comey mean the investigation nto alleged Russian links to Trump’s team is over? Of course not…it is such a high profile investigation Trump would never be able to kick it into the long grass and ‘cover it up’..if there is anything to cover up.
The problem Sopel has, is that he starts to shake uncontrollably when he is clearly giving his own opinions instead of ‘reporting’ the facts. His delivery then gets faster and faster,
gabbling away and it all becomes a bit of a comic act!
If he was a good actor or even presenter of facts, he could do much better, as after all, he is only spouting what he’s told to spout, using all the bBeeb buzzwords to demean President Trump at every turn.
And thanks Alan, for this post. I hadn’t had time to look out the real reasons for the sacking.
Like many who visit Biased BBC I do not watch or listen to BBC News which isn’t. I use, again like so many others, the web particularly YouTube. When I heard that James Comey had been fired I immediately went to the following YouTube source.
A previous Bill Still report on the firing of James Comey which is the one I wished post. With apologies.
The list of BBC editorial integrity techniques is not long, but significant in how often deployed these days:
1) Anonymous ‘sources’, who say things. These are a Nick Robinson favourite, he of much stamping of foot when BBC impartiality is challenged. Lucky for him there is the ‘purposes of’ exclusion, uniquely, so transparency and trust covered too.
2) Actual “quotes”, though these can be heavily edited to avoid context if it is awkward to the narrative. As with vox pops, these are from people carefully vetted by the BBC to ensure the “quote” does the job.
3) ‘Quotes’, which the BBC uses variably again, but often fall under ‘truthiness’ or ‘what might have been said’ BBC editorial guideline weasels. Also valuable to introduce tonality, especially when seeking to instill doubt.
4) Implication or allusion or association, using one degree of separation ‘sources’ (see above) to conflate and tar, but with all necessary coverage of backsides. If it fails, at senior level a several million £ inquiry option is available, and if that fails then recourse to selective Alzheimer’s. Again.
5) The posing of ‘questions’ as headlines as above, designed solely to say something, anything, but not be held to account for it, just like those claims in gizmo magazine ads for butt crack trimmers or single baked potato microwaves.
6) CECUO – There if all the above does not convince and gets called into question. Staffed, at great expense, by BBC or ex BBC employees to ensure any accountability for being utterly bent is quietly disposed of over a nine month period.
It’s in their DNA. And no laughing matter.
https://twitter.com/polnewsforever/status/862438444949278724
Comey definitely deserved to go. He absorbed the Obama White House’s attitude to laws: make them up as you go along and enforce them to taste. Ironically, that wasn’t why he was sacked, but it made him a disastrous figurehead for the FBI. There was naked corruption in the way Hillary Clinton was able to sail serenely towards what looked, no doubt, from the perspective of Quantico, Va., an inevitable presidency.
Loretta Lynch was never going to allow any prosecution of the Democrats’ candidate to proceed; her rendezvous with Bill Clinton in Arizona made that abundantly apparent. Although she claimed they simply chatted about their grandchildren, she made strenuous, if unsuccessful, efforts to keep the meeting secret. Her boss, over on Pennsylvania Avenue, had demonstrably lied about his knowledge of Clinton’s idiosyncratic version of computer security. Lynch’s priority was to protect “scandal-free” (his assessment – not mine) Obama, but Comey’s behaviour laid bare the fact that putting another Democrat in the White House was essential to that strategy.
In effect, Comey signalled that, if you’re expected to be the next POTUS, you’re too big to prosecute. I doubt if any Republican candidate would have received the same treatment, because the Republican wouldn’t have been expected to win in November. Once inaugurated, Clinton could have made all the investigations and evidence disappear.
It’s the same mentality as the French repeatedly display, when they elect their hideously corrupt presidents. You can commit any crime you like, as long as you are the candidate favoured by the establishment. Once in the Elysée, you’re untouchable, until the end of your term. Chirac used his office as sanctuary and suddenly became too senile to face trial, the moment he stepped down. We shan’t be hearing any more about the bone-orchard in Macron’s wardrobe for the next five years, either, I suspect.
Comey knew perfectly well that Lynch and Obama wouldn’t countenance any action against Hillary Clinton, but he went out of his way to give the impression that the decision was based on legal grounds, rather than political ones. The irony is that the media in the US tend to cover up stories embarrassing to the left anyway. When Bernie Sanders asserted that, “…the American people are sick and tired about hearing about your damn emails,” most of the people in the audience probably hadn’t a clue what he was talking about, because the MSM had been studiously avoiding the story. In giving Clinton what he thought was a free pass to the Oval Office, Comey actually gave the e-mail scandal more prominence than it had ever had before. Being part of the Washington DC Bubble, like Sanders and Clinton herself, he hadn’t realised how little traction the story had gained in the wider world, thanks to the exertions of CNN, NBC and our own, beloved Beebyanka to suppress it.
Thanks for that Owen.