The Loyalty Dinner, Part I, Part 2, Part 3, Comey’s Conflicting Versions

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American Greatness

The Loyalty Dinner, Part I,  Comey’s Conflicting Versions 

By Bruce Heiden| June 27, 2017

Editor’s note: This is the third part of a three-part series. Read Part II here and Part III here.

No secret tapes are needed to prove that President Trump never demanded a pledge of loyalty from James Comey at their January 27 dinner. All the evidence is there in Comey’s own testimony.

National Review essayist David French recently stated what many journalists and other Americans believe when he wrote, “There now exists sworn testimony that Trump asked Comey for personal loyalty….” French was discussing President Trump’s supposed exposure to charges of obstruction of justice. But French is mistaken: sworn testimony to this effect does not exist, because Comey’s June 8 testimony concerning his January 27 dinner with the president nowhere reports, whether through quotation, paraphrase, or even implication, that “Trump asked Comey for personal loyalty.” This serious and widespread misconception must be cleared up.  

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The Loyalty Dinner, Part II: ‘I Need Loyalty’

By Bruce Heiden| June 28, 2017

Editor’s note: This is the second part of a three-part series. Read Part I here and Part III here.

Recall former FBI Director James Comey’s advice, in version two of the now-famous Loyalty Dinner, that an independent bureau serves the president’s own best interests; then note how Comey’s narration moves somewhat abruptly to an apparent inflection point in the conversation, set off in a new paragraph:

A few moments later, the president said, “I need loyalty, I expect loyalty.” I didn’t move…during the awkward silence that followed. We simply looked at each other in silence. The conversation then moved on….

That this critical passage is murky should go without saying, since its main feature is a long and “awkward” silence between two people who are not personal friends, familiar acquaintances, or even longstanding coworkers, and whom narrator Comey assumes see the world through two very different lenses.  https://amgreatness.com/2017/06/27/loyalty-dinner-part-comeys-conflicting-versions/

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The Loyalty Dinner, Part III: The Steele Dossier

By Bruce Heiden| June 30, 2017

Editor’s note: This is the third part of a three-part series. Read Part I here and Part II here.  

Trump wanted Comey’s input about how the FBI could protect their country’s President from a vile defamation.  Too much to ask?

Once FBI Director James Comey finishes narrating the end of his dinner with President Trump, he unveils a surprise: the story so far has been incomplete. Narrator Comey has withheld a topic of the dinner conversation that he now appends as an afterthought. But it’s much more important than that.

The topic, never mentioned at all in version one and thus made public as part of the Loyalty Dinner only in Comey’s June 8 testimony, is what has come to be known as the “Steele dossier” (which Comey calls “the salacious material”). In narrating the Loyalty Dinner from beginning to end while suppressing the discussion of this topic somewhere in the middle, Comey’s testimony reveals that version two in itself actually presents two conflicting versions of his dinner with Trump.

The version we analyzed in Part II would be version 2a, while version 2b would be the Loyalty Dinner as reconstructed with the “Steele dossier”       https://amgreatness.com/2017/06/30/loyalty-dinner-part-iii-steele-dossier/