Mark Steyn on the fascinating differences between lying to the FBI and having the FBI lie to you:
Recently I had occasion to speak with an FBI agent myself in connection with a matter rather closer to home for me than the Kremlin. After a couple of hours of going over all the details, I leaned back in my chair and said, “What do you think’s really going on here?” And the G-Man, who was actually a G-Woman, replied that, in her experience, you could investigate someone for two or three years and never know the answer to that question. So you nail them on mail fraud. And we all had a good laugh and went on our merry way.
But I confess I feel a little queasy about that. If you investigate someone long enough, you may not get the goods on them, but you’ll certainly get some goods. And so much of American justice seems to involve designating the guy you’re gonna get, and then figuring out afterwards what it is you can get him on – Al Capone for tax evasion being merely the most celebrated example thereof. But there are a zillion lesser examples and Jim Comey has made his own famous contribution to the pantheon: He got Martha Stewart banged up in the Big House for lying to the FBI in a matter for which there was no underlying crime.
Incidentally, why is it a crime for Americans to lie to the FBI but not for the FBI to lie to Americans? As when Comey testified – just a month ago – that Huma Abedin had forwarded hundreds of thousands of emails to the laptop of her sex-fiend husband. Like so much Comey grandstanding, it was a great story – but it wasn’t true:
The problem: Much of what Comey said about this was inaccurate. Now the FBI is trying to figure out what to do about it.
If Martha Stewart or Scooter Libby had done that, “what to do about it” would be easy: They’d be headed to the slammer. But, when the FBI Director makes false statements under oath in a matter for which he is giving expert, prepared testimony, he gets to skate.
This “Russia investigation” is now in its Martha Stewart phase: Fifteen lawyers are not going on a two-year fishing expedition in order to hold a press conference and say they came up empty. Somewhere along the way someone will misremember something and the fifteen synchronized fishers will leap in the air and pounce: Ah-ha!
