<![CDATA[book]]><![CDATA[crime]]><![CDATA[criminal]]><![CDATA[FBI investigation]]><![CDATA[FBI]]><![CDATA[James Comey]]><![CDATA[law]]><![CDATA[president]]><![CDATA[Secret Service]]><![CDATA[threat]]><![CDATA[Trump]]>

Twitter/X User Discovers Very Projectiony Blurb for James Comey’s New Novel – Twitchy

admin
May 16, 2025
0Points
0
0
Twitter/X User Discovers Very Projectiony Blurb for James Comey’s New Novel – Twitchy

For the record, that is not a typo in the title. We are coining a new word: Projectiony. We don’t care how much autocorrect resists us, we shall will this into the English language!





Jokes aside, regular readers know that previously, we covered how James Comey allegedly posted an alleged death threat against the president on Instagram and then deleted it. Then we covered how the DHS, FBI, Secret Service, maybe even the FDA and the Department of Education were investigating this alleged death threat. (Okay, those last two agencies were a joke.) Additionally, we covered Comey’s history of finding political messages on the beach and a weird coincidence on the date of this alleged threat.

You even saw how Trump responded to the alleged threat, here, among other things. We will say that it seems likely that Trump actually wants to see Comey prosecuted, which is why he was saying he didn’t want to ‘take a position’ on what should happen with Comey during that interview. Trump is buying into the bogus position that the President is not allowed to have an opinion on a criminal case—even though he is the top law enforcement officer in this country. It is a common myth that the Attorney General is America’s top law enforcement officer, but the Attorney General only gets that power through delegation from the president. Our Constitution says that the President ‘shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed[,]’ (Art. II, § 3) which means that it is actually Trump’s duty to enforce the law, above anyone he has appointed.

We also heard that James Comey had a book coming out next week, leading some people to suspect that Comey was doing all of this for publicity, maybe even so he can play martyr to the Trump administration when he gets to the FO stage of FAFO. 

We are probably going to write a VIP post why we think there is almost zero chance he gets convicted of any threats—unless we learn of some very surprising information. We can even think of some information that the Administration might look for that might increase the chances of conviction. But we do think there is a strong chance of him being indicted, with so much of the Trump administration wanting to come down on him and we all know that fighting even baseless charges is expensive. And we are not convinced that any charges would be baseless. This author is personally at the point where he is convinced that Comey knew exactly what he was doing, trying to threaten Trump while maintaining plausible deniability, but we don’t think we can prove it beyond a reasonable doubt as required in a criminal case.

Recommended

But in all that we didn’t actually pay attention to the book he is about to drop, which is called ‘FDR Drive: A Crime Novel’ because why would you? Did anyone hear anything good about his previous novels? We certainly didn’t.

But then we saw this post on Twitter/X and it made us pay attention. Check out the description of the book:

If you don’t want to squint, that appears to be a screencap from Publisher’s Weekly and here’s what that description says:

Former FBI director Comey (Westport) reunites the protagonists of his first two legal thrillers for his strongest outing yet. U.S. attorney Carmen Garcia is trying to take down Samuel Buchanan, a far-right media personality with a popular podcast vilifying those he thinks are destroying America: intellectuals, immigrants, and people of color. Garcia believes Buchanan went far beyond the protection of the First Amendment when he singled out his enemies by name and suggested ‘something should be done’ about them. His fans have obliged, killing or grievously injuring some of his foes. In a series of tense and exhilarating courtroom scenes, Garcia works with Deputy U.S. Attorney Nora Carleton to bring Buchanan down. Then, just as they’ve convicted him, a new threat emerges: some of his followers have planned an act of terror at an upcoming UN convention. Comey’s ripped-from-the-headlines plot—which, with its focus on Nora’s hand-wringing about following legal and constitutional protocol, is easy to read as a bit of self-reflection—never loses steam. This proves that Comey the crime novelist is here to stay.

And, certainly, it’s fine to look at this and just point and laugh. Go ahead. It’s fun.

But we couldn’t help but notice several things.

First, going by the description, it is legally illiterate. He is basically claiming that this evil right-winger, Samuel Buchanon, incited violence on a podcast by saying ‘something should be done’ about particular people that this Buchanon character thinks are ruining America. Folks, if that is all the podcaster says, that is not even close to meeting the legal standard for incitement of violence. We won’t go into the entire law of incitement since we already did that in a previous post, but as we said in that post, the First Amendment requires a three part test:





You have to have: 1) advocacy of the use of force or of law violation, 2) directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action, and 3) it has to be likely to incite or produce such action.

The most basic problem is that there is no advocacy. As we said in that prior post, you have to have very clear advocacy and ‘something should be done’ about a person won’t cut it because there are so many legal things that can be done to someone. Depending on what that person is actually doing, that can include lawsuits, attempted restraining orders, deplatforming, boycotts, criminal prosecution and so on. Doing ‘something’ can include many acts that are just plain legal, so it is hard to argue that this means to hurt or kill a person. The only way it might be advocacy of violence is if you could prove that the person had set that as a code phrase much like ‘kill the cockroaches’ or ‘exterminate the cockroaches’ was allegedly used in Rwanda as code for ‘time to kill the Tutsis’ so that when the Hutus heard that, it was a command to start killing immediately. But outside of that unlikely context, it just won’t cut it.

Furthermore, by a podcast? A podcast? That is almost certainly not enough to satisfy the imminence requirement. It really has to be much more immediate than is likely to occur with a podcast. It really has to be ‘right now’ when the book’s description makes it sound like the timing of the attack is more like ‘eventually.’ Indeed, it would be hard to believe this Buchanan character would have any expectation of violence within two hours and under that test, that intent is enough to negate any claims of incitement.

After all, one point that gets lost in the discussion of incitement law is that whether or not any bad behavior follows is not even relevant. If we were the judge in an incitement case, we are likely to refuse to even allow evidence of any subsequent violence to follow. As the Supreme Court said in Forsyth County v. Nationalist Movement, 505 U.S. 123 (1992) ‘Listeners’ reaction to speech is not a content-neutral basis for regulation.’ If you read that legal test for incitement carefully, it is not driven by what actually happens but instead by intent and likelihood.

So, unless Comey adds a great deal to the scenario that isn’t suggested by this blurb, such as different words from his bad guy and a scenario creating an immediacy that isn’t normally suggested by the podcast format, this is a legally illiterate book apparently containing a great deal of courtroom drama, which rarely results in good legal drama. Now, to be fair, there are few stories taking place in courtrooms that get it right. So, this lawyer has learned to endure a certain level of ‘acceptable wrongness’ when it comes to courtroom stories in order to enjoy them. But there gets to be a point where the people creating legal fiction are so clueless this author can’t enjoy it at all. Probably we get the most annoyed when the entire legal premise of the story is wrong, such as the Ashley Judd dud Double Jeopardy.





(And for the record, Ashley Judd’s character cannot legally murder Bruce Greenwood’s character in cold blood. Oy vey.)

Thus, we can’t bring ourselves to watch that movie and we don’t think we can bring ourselves to read Comey the Clown’s book. And in the case of Comey the Clown’s book, it’s not just because of the legal errors but because it is plainly anti-free-speech agitprop and we refuse to spend money to support that. The message seems to be ‘We have to silence these evil right wingers because they are dangerous’ ignoring that time leftists burned our cities for nearly a year in 2020.

So, it’ll probably be adapted into an made-for-HBO-Max movie, right? *Eye roll*

But the other thing we noticed is, well, right in our headline: How ‘projectiony’ it is. Calling on people to ‘86’ the President of the United States comes a lot closer to actual advocacy of violence than saying some vague thing should be done about someone. And of course, two people have already tried to kill Trump and everyone should know by now that if Trump didn’t turn his head just at the right moment, then he would have at least had a life-changing and very serious injury in Pennsylvania. And let’s not forget two audience members were shot and a third died. So after writing a whole novel about an evil right winger who is trying to get his followers to engage in political violence …  Comey is now looking like he is courting political violence himself.

Seriously, by the standards Comey seems to be advocating for, Comey seems to have committed incitement, in addition to potentially a death threat. Obviously not by the standards of the actual law of the First Amendment but in Comey’s distortion of the law, he meets the standard. He has said, in essence, ‘this is what incitement looks like’ and then did something worse. Wholly apart from any criminal law consequences, it should be damning in the court of public opinion.

We suppose the irony is that maybe now Comey will actually learn something about the law of incitement. Seriously, how was he the head of the FBI and didn’t know what the law of incitement actually required? How is it that he wrote a book that sounds significantly like a courtroom drama, without apparently passing the draft to a lawyer friend to look it over? Or was that lawyer friend incompetent? The mind boggles.





All of this is a reminder of what we have said for a long time: What the government needs is what we half-jokingly call ‘First Amendment Sensitivity Training.’ We think every government agent or employee needs to be given a simple course on what the First Amendment actually means and what those government agents can and can’t do under it. Things such as:

1. Government agents cannot discriminate based on viewpoint in prosecutions and benefits.

2. Religious belief is one of those viewpoints you can’t discriminate against.

3. There is no such thing as hate speech law. ‘Hate,’ however you define it, is a viewpoint. See point 1.

4. What constitutes constitutionally punishable threats, intimidation or incitement.

5. The government does not have the power to punish false statements in general.

6. Divisive speech is free speech.

That’s only a sampling of what we wish government officials understood. But we see so many officials who should absolutely know better who seem ignorant of these points 

On to reactions:

EXACTLY!!!

That’s a very credible guess as for who the fictional bad guy is a stand in for. The initials are often a clue, but we suppose we would have to actually read the book to figure it out. And we don’t want to do that.

We could also imagine that this character is driven in part by lingering hatred for Pat Buchanon.

True. If we worked in the FBI, DHS, the Secret Service, or any other organization that is investigating we would … sigh … see it as our duty to actually read the book to see how much he hangs himself with his own words. But we think we would have to ask for hazard pay for it.





The cut off text says:

‘Comey’s rippled from the headlines plot … is easy to read as a bit of self-reflection.’

Ripped from future headlines, apparently, and more like projection than self-reflection. We don’t think he sees how much he is what he denounces.

‘Shell game?’ We will definitely have to use that in a future headline on this topic.

Finally, we have this bit of horror:

She … has … romance novels? Like as in more than one?

We are scared to look into this.

RELATED: BREAKING: James Comey Posts Alleged Call to Murder Trump on Instagram, Then Deletes It (But We Have It)

LAWSPLAINING: Court Documents Filed Against Ábrego García Says He Claimed Could Get Away With Murder

WATCH: President Trump Roasts ABC News Reporter Terry Moran to His Face for Poor Journalism

LISTEN: Justice Jackson Accidentally Makes the Case for the RIGHT to Vouchers (And a Deep Dive)

‘First Do No Harm:’ Fisking John Oliver on the Transgender/Sports Issue

The Question Isn’t Whether Trump Can Revoke Biden’s Pardons. It’s Whether They Were Issued at all







Editor’s Note: The Deep State is working overtime to subvert President Trump’s agenda and the will of the people. 

Help Twitchy continue to tell the truth about the efforts of unelected career government officials working against the American people. Join Twitchy VIP and use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your membership.





Source link

admin

Related Posts

1 of 168
Copyright © 2025 right2024 - .
Copyright © 2025 right2024 - .