Former FBI Director James Comey revealed in closed-door testimony with House Republicans on Friday that he deliberately concealed an explosive memorandum about his one-on-one Oval Office meeting with President Trump in February 2017 from top Department of Justice officials.
The former FBI head also acknowledged that when the agency initiated its counterintelligence probe into possible collusion between Trump campaign officials and the Russian government in July 2016, investigators “didn’t know whether we had anything” and that “in fact, when I was fired as director [in May 2017], I still didn’t know whether there was anything to it.”
His remarks square with testimony this summer from former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, whose anti-Trump texts became a focus of House GOP oversight efforts. Page told Congress in a closed-door deposition that “even as far as May 2017” — more than nine months after the counterintelligence probe commenced — “we still couldn’t answer the question” as to whether Trump staff had improperly colluded with Russia.
Comey further testified on Friday that he and his aides were “all very concerned” about how the president had spoken of the probe into fired National Security Adviser Michael Flynn in a private Oval Office meeting, according to a 235-page transcript of his remarks released as a part of an agreement between House Republicans and Comey.
Former FBI Director James Comey testifies in closed-door interview on the Hill; chief intelligence correspondent Catherine Herridge reports.
The fired FBI director wrote in his memorandum that Trump had told him, “I hope you can let this go,” amid reports that Flynn had lied to the FBI and senior White House officials about his contacts with Russia’s government.
But despite that concern, Comey told Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, that he and his team made a “judgment call” not to tell then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions or his lieutenants about Trump’s comments, saying he thought Sessions would recuse himself “in a matter of days” from the Russia probe.
“We agreed that we ought to hold it very close, not brief the investigative team at this point and not go over and talk to the leadership of the Department of Justice, to hold onto it until we got a new deputy attorney general and they sorted out how they were going to supervise the Russia investigation,” Comey said.
Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, at center, pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI as part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. (AP)
Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who was later fired for leaking a self-serving story to the press and lying about it to Comey and federal investigators, was among the brain trust Comey sat down with to discuss his options. The two were joined, Comey said, by then-FBI General Counsel James Baker and Comey’s chief of staff, James Rybicki.
Comey told lawmakers that others may have been present as well, including FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich (who was an associate deputy director at the time), National Security Branch Executive Director Carl Ghattas, and FBI counterintelligence head Bill Priestap, who recently announced he would leave the agency by year-end. Comey said that he did not believe anti-Trump FBI Agent Peter Strzok or former FBI lawyer Lisa Page were in the room.
Comey testified: “We believed that the Attorney General, Mr. Sessions, was on the cusp of recusing himself from anything related to Russia, so it didn’t make any sense to brief him on it, and that there was no deputy attorney general at that point.” (Sally Yates, a holdover from the Obama administration, was terminated by Trump in late January 2017 after she refused to defend the administration’s ban on travel from several Muslim-majority nations in court.)
“We agreed that we ought to hold it very close.”
— Former FBI Director James Comey
Sessions recused himself from Russia-related matters shortly afterward, in early March 2017 — a decision that Trump has since called a “terrible mistake,” although it was recommended by career Justice Department officials in part because Sessions had met with Russian dignitaries while assisting with the Trump campaign. But Jordan pressed Comey on why he decided not to tell the next-in-command at the DOJ.
Lawmakers release transcript of testimony from former FBI Director James Comey; reaction from Rep. Jim Jordan, Republican member of the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees.
“I don’t know who was No. 3 at that point,” Comey responded. “There was an acting — there was a U.S. Attorney acting as the deputy attorney general, who we knew would be in the seat only until Rod Rosenstein was confirmed,” he added, in an apparent reference to former Acting Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente, who served until Rosenstein took the job in April 2017.
Comey continued that “it made sense to hold onto it” because “we saw no investigative urgency.”
But unredacted sections of Comey’s other memoranda documenting his conversations with Trump apparently demonstrate that he later did inform Boente and other top DOJ officials about other sensitive matters concerning his conversations with the president.
In a memorandum documenting his phone conversation with Trump on March 30, 2017, about how to “lift the cloud” of the Russia investigation from the White House, Comey wrote, “I called the acting attorney general and relayed the substance of the above and said I was telling him so he could decide what guidance to give me, if any.”
In a call from the White House that day, Comey wrote that Trump had asked him “several times” to “find a way to get out” to the public that he was not actively under investigation as part of the ongoing federal probe into possible Russia collusion with his team. Comey assured Trump, and congressional leaders, that the president was not being investigated at the time.
Former FBI Director James Comey, with his attorney, David Kelley, right, speaks to reporters after a day of testimony before the House Judiciary and Oversight committees, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, Dec. 7, 2018. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) (Associated Press)
House Republicans are set to have another opportunity to question Comey before they lose majority status when the new Congress is seated in January. The fired FBI director told reporters his return visit for more testimony will likely come the “week after next.”
Comey largely frustrated GOP lawmakers during Friday’s session, in large part because his lawyers urged him not to answer numerous questions. On Twitter after his testimony, Comey sharply criticized what he characterized as Republicans’ “desperate attempt to find anything that can be used to attack the institutions of justice investigating this president.”
But while Comey insisted in the interview that “we never investigated the Trump campaign for political purposes,” the transcript shows he claimed ignorance or memory lapses in response to questions concerning key details and events in the Russia investigation, which some GOP lawmakers continue to claim was improperly conducted.
The transcript reveals lawmakers’ frustration with his lack of specifics. Asked if he recalled who drafted the FBI’s “initiation document” for the July 2016 Russia investigation, Comey said, “I do not.” He again claimed not to know when asked about the involvement in that initiation of Peter Strzok, whose anti-Trump texts later got him removed from the special counsel’s probe.
When asked if the FBI had any evidence that anyone in the Trump campaign conspired to hack the DNC server, Comey gave a lengthy answer referring to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation as to why he couldn’t answer.
Early Sunday, Trump slammed Comey’s testimony repeatedly on Twitter, deriding him as “Leakin’ James Comey.”
On 245occasions, former FBI Director James Comey told House investigators he didn’t know, didn’t recall, or couldn’t remember things when asked. Opened investigations on 4 Americans (not 2) – didn’t know who signed off and didn’t know Christopher Steele. All lies!
Leakin’ James Comey must have set a record for who lied the most to Congress in one day. His Friday testimony was so untruthful! This whole deal is a Rigged Fraud headed up by dishonest people who would do anything so that I could not become President. They are now exposed!
But there was a time when Comey, by his own accounting, didn’t think of himself as the kind of person who would leak information behind the president’s back.
In a Jan. 28, 2017, dinner with Trump in the White House’s Green Room, Comey wrote in a since-released memorandum that he told the president, “I don’t do sneaky things, I don’t leak, I don’t do weasel moves.“
James Comey Admits FBI Was Still Probing ‘Pee’ Dossier Until Day He Was Fired
At the time James B. Comey was fired as FBI director, his agency was still attempting to corroborate claims made in the infamous, largely-discredited anti-Trump dossier, Comey admitted.
In testimony to the House Judiciary Committee on Friday, Comey described an effort “to try to replicate, either rule in or rule out, as much of that collection of reports that’s commonly now called the Steele dossier as possible, and that that work was ongoing when I was fired.” Trump dismissed Comey from the FBI on May 9, 2017.
A transcript of Comey’s testimony was released on Saturday. During one exchange with lawmakers, Comey said that FBI efforts to probe the dossier given to the agency by former British spy Christopher Steele started “sometime in ’16” almost immediately after Steele provided the charges.
The timing is instructive. In previous testimony, Comey admitted that he pushed back against a January 2017 request from President Donald Trump to possibly investigate the origins of the claims made inside the Steele dossier.
Comey’s latest testimony shows that even while he was cautioning Trump against ordering a probe of the dossier claims, Comey’s own FBI was quietly conducting an ongoing investigation into the wild content of that very dossier.
During prepared remarks for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, delivered on June 8, 2017, Comey related how he pushed back against a suggestion from Trump to investigate the dossier claims.
The former FBI chief stated that following a January 6 Oval Office meeting with Intelligence Community leaders, Comey “remained alone with the President Elect to brief him on some personally sensitive aspects of the information assembled during the assessment.”’
It is clear Comey was referring to the dossier since he writes the “salacious and unverified” material was about to be publicly reported by the news media. Four days after that briefing, the dossier was published by BuzzFeed.
In his statement summarizing his conversation with Trump, Comey refers to Russian prostitutes, a key component of the dossier:
He said he had nothing to do with Russia, had not been involved with hookers in Russia, and had always assumed he was being recorded when in Russia.
In a private White House dinner with Trump on January 27, Comey says the topic of the “salacious material” again came up and he reveals that Trump was considering asking the FBI to investigate the origins of the claims. Comey pushed back against that idea.
Comey writes:
During the dinner, the President returned to the salacious material I had briefed him about on January 6, and, as he had done previously, expressed his disgust for the allegations and strongly denied them. He said he was considering ordering me to investigate the alleged incident to prove it didn’t happen. I replied that he should give that careful thought because it might create a narrative that we were investigating him personally, which we weren’t, and because it was very difficult to prove a negative. He said he would think about it and asked me to think about it.
The Steele dossier was reportedly funded by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) via the Perkins Coie law firm.
A House Intelligence Committee memo released last February documented that as FBI director, Comey signed three FISA applications to spy on former Trump adviser Carter Page with the dossier serving as part of the basis for the warrant requests.
Comey signed the applications without telling the FISA court that the dossier was financed by Trump’s primary political opponents, the memo related.
“Neither the initial application in October 2016, nor any of the renewals, disclose or reference the role of the DNC, Clinton campaign, or any party/campaign in funding Steele’s efforts, even though the political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior and FBI officials,” the memo states.
The GOP memo also relates that after Steele was terminated months earlier as an FBI source a “source validation report conducted by an independent unit within FBI assessed Steele’s reporting as only minimally corroborated.” Still, Comey saw fit, according to the Republican and Democrat memos, to utilize the dossier in the FISA documents. He also briefed Trump and then-President Barack Obama on the dossier contents.
When he was appointed a Justice Department special counsel in May 2017, Robert Mueller was assigned the task of determining whether presidential candidate Donald Trump and/or members of the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to elect Trump president. New court filings Friday by Mueller and federal prosecutors in New York City leave this central question unanswered.
In 19 months, the Mueller probe has expanded again and again, taking an ever-widening look over many years at a broad range of activities by people associated with the Trump campaign or who had business dealings with Trump long before he moved into the White House.
Some crimes that people have been charged with or even admitted to have nothing to do with Trump, but rather pertain to wrongdoing or alleged wrongdoing by people with some association with him.
Unquestionably, this is a fishing expedition that has caught some fish. Mueller and his team of prosecutors have secured indictments, convictions and guilty pleas from people with some affiliation with Trump – but as yet, there is no “smoking gun” saying there was Trump-Russia collusion to defeat Hillary Clinton and install Trump in the Oval Office.
Will this evidence turn up in the future? The only honest answer those of us without inside information can give is that we don’t know.
Much of Mueller’s activities are cloaked in secrecy. Many of the documents he has filed in court have large amounts of information blacked out – “redacted” in legal terminology – so we have no idea what they say.
But we have to wonder: How long will this investigation go on? How wide a net will it cast? How far back in time will it go? How many more millions of dollars will it cost American taxpayers?
And finally, is the cloud the Mueller probe is casting over the Trump administration benefitting our nation, or simply weakening the president and preventing him from accomplishing the many things the American people elected him to do on our behalf?
The latest chapter in this long saga took place Friday when a sentencing memorandum was filed in U.S. District Court New York City by the Justice Department dealing with former Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen.
Cohen earlier pleaded guilty to multiple counts of business and tax fraud. He also pleaded guilty to making an excessive contribution to the Trump campaign and to making false statements to Congress regarding unsuccessful efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.
The sentencing memo for Cohen shows there is clearly no love lost between him and the Justice Department, despite his pleading guilty to the charges against him.
The Cohen memo was in sharp contrast to the sentencing recommendation that Mueller recently filed in the government’s case against retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who served for 24 days as President Trump’s national security adviser. That recommended little or no jail time.
But the U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York asked the court to impose a “substantial term of imprisonment” against Cohen of about four to five years.
The recommendation reflects what the Justice Department document calls Cohen’s “extensive, deliberate, and serious criminal conduct.”
The Probation Department is recommending a sentence of 42 months in prison and a $100,000 fine for Cohen.
The sentencing memorandum castigates Cohen, saying he was “motivated by personal greed, and repeatedly used his power and influence for deceptive ends.”
The four crimes Cohen pleaded guilty to – tax evasion, false statements to a financial institution, illegal campaign contributions, and false statements to Congress – were “marked by a pattern of deception that permeated his professional life (and was evidently hidden from the friends and family members who wrote on his behalf).”
In fact, Cohen’s criminal conduct, according to the sentencing memo, strikes “at several pillars of our society and system of government: the payment of taxes; transparent and fair elections; and truthfulness before government and in business.”
And finally, is the cloud the Mueller probe is casting over the Trump administration benefitting our nation, or simply weakening the president and preventing him from accomplishing the many things the American people elected him to do on our behalf?
The Justice Department accuses Cohen of seeking the “extraordinary leniency” of no prison sentence based on “his rose-colored view of the seriousness of the crimes” and his providing “certain information to law enforcement.”
But the department downplays Cohen’s cooperation with Special Counsel Mueller, calling Cohen’s claim “overstated” and “incomplete.”
In fact, the department says Cohen is not getting official recognition as a “cooperating witness.” The sentencing memo says Cohen’s providing of some information should be a “mitigating factor” but that he “repeatedly declined to provide full information about the scope of any additional criminal conduct in which he may have engaged or had knowledge.”
This throws doubt on the idea that Cohen has secretly provided some kind of undisclosed information or evidence to the special counsel that bears on what is supposed to be the focus of Mueller’s investigation: whether there was any unlawful collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials to change the outcome of the 2016 election.
Another interesting note in the sentencing recommendation is a statement by the Justice Department that indicates that Cohen greatly exaggerated his access to Trump. The department says that Cohen “secured a substantial amount of consulting business for himself” by claiming he had “unique insights and access to Individual-1,” referring to Trump.
But while Cohen made millions of dollars from these consulting contracts, “his promises of insight and access proved essentially hollow” and he performed “minimal work,” according to the sentencing memo. It also says Cohen “used sophisticated tactics to conceal his misconduct.”
After a lengthy description of Cohen’s crimes, the Justice Department says that his conduct “underscores the need for a substantial period of incarceration as a means to promote respect for the law and to deter future abuses by other individuals seeking improperly to influence the electoral process, evade taxes, or lie to financial institutions.”
The department then spends eight pages explaining why the court should ignore Cohen’s request for a sentence of time served, with no additional jail time, because in essence, Cohen thinks “he is above the laws reflected in his crimes of conviction.”
Yet it cannot be emphasized enough that once again, as with prior documents filed by the Justice Department and the special counsel dealing with other defendants, there is no information in Cohen’s sentencing memorandum about the issue of possible Trump-Russia election collusion.
Perhaps there is such material in whatever information Cohen gave to the special counsel in his debriefing meetings. We can only guess.
There were also new developments Friday in a separate case involving former Trump Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort.
Mueller filed a document in U.S. District court in Washington outlining his claim that Manafort breached a plea agreement when he “told multiple discernible lies” to Mueller’s office and the FBI that were “not instances of mere memory lapses.”
Mueller says that Manafort met with the special counsel’s office 12 times and was called before a grand jury twice.
Large portions of the filing are redacted, but Mueller contends that Manafort lied about his interactions with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian-Ukrainian political consultant who worked with Manafort.
Mueller also contends that Manafort lied about: a wire transfer of $125,000 to a firm working for Manafort; information “pertinent to another Department of Justice investigation;” and “Manafort’s contact with Administration officials.”
Manafort contends he has told the truth to Mueller.
Once again, with the extensive redactions, there is no way to tell whether any of these alleged false statements had anything to do with the Russian election collusion investigation. If Manafort contests the government’s claims, as is likely, then the judge will hold a hearing where the special counsel says it will “prove the false statements.”
If the judges in each of these cases adopt the government’s recommendations and claims, Cohen will be facing a handful of years in prison and Manafort, 69, could spend the rest of his life in prison.
Manafort was convicted in August of eight counts of financial fraud and was facing another trial on additional felony charges when he agreed in September to plead guilty to two more felonies and to cooperate with Mueller’s office.
What comes next? We simply don’t know, because Mueller has not lifted the curtain hiding much of his activities. But as of now, from what we know on the public record, Mueller has failed to prove the Trump-Russia collusion that he was appointed to investigate 19 months ago.
Trump should have investigated Hillary and all the corrupt Democrats. Don’t play nice with demons is my motto.
0:55
Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” the likely next chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said President Donald Trump might “face the real prospect of jail time” in light of charges against his personal attorney, Michael Cohen for illegal payments during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Schiff said, “There’s a very real prospect that on the day Donald Trump leaves office, the Justice Department may indict him, that he may be the first president in quite some time to face the real prospect of jail time. We have been discussing the issue of pardons the president may offer to people or dangle in front of people. The bigger pardon question may come down the road, as the next president has to determine whether to pardon Donald Trump.”
True Faith is confidence and obedience to God’s Holy Word in spite of your circumstances.
Faith is believing God Almighty will do just what he said he would do.
Matthew Henry says that “Faith demonstrates to the eye of the mind the reality of those things that cannot be discerned by the eye of the body.”
Your mind has a spiritual eye that sees things thru Gods eye and communicates to God’s Spirit that lives within in us the promises of His word and His Will.
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
NIV
Hebrews 11
Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see
Hebrews 11 Amplified Bible (AMP)
1 Now faith is the assurance (title deed, confirmation) of things hoped for (divinely guaranteed), and the evidence of things not seen [the conviction of their reality—faith comprehends as fact what cannot be experienced by the physical senses].
Why doesn’t the Media and the criminal elected officials ever talk about China being America’s enemy?
BOEING CANCELS CONTROVERSIAL SATELLITE ORDER FUNDED BY CHINA
Two Americans wanted to create a satellite in an effort to increase internet access in Africa, but their project quickly turned over into the hands of the Chinese government.
Boeing, who was hired to build the satellite and knew of the Chinese government’s involvement in the project, reportedly announced Thursday it was cancelling the order.
Boeing cited default for nonpayment, calling it a business decision.
Boeing decided to cancel an order for a satellite that uses sensitive technology used by the U.S. military and was reportedly being funded by a state-owned Chinese financial firm.
A Wall Street Journal investigation revealed Tuesday the troubling web of financial transactions that skirted around U.S. export laws, which would ban Boeing from selling satellites to China, and resulted in the Chinese government funneling nearly $200 million to the project and obtaining a large stake of the company responsible for the satellite.
Boeing told WSJ Thursday it cancelled the project, which was near completion at a Boeing facility in Los Angeles, citing default for nonpayment. A source familiar with the project said the cancellation was a business decision, and the company may attempt to resell the satellite. (RELATED: US Satellite May Now Be Controlled By China)
Emil Youssefzadeh and Umar Javed, two Americans who founded the startup Global IP in 2008 with the goal of improving internet accessibility in Africa, were Boeing’s original customers of the satellite. A few foreign financial transactions made in an attempt to sidestep U.S. export laws almost potentially resulted in the Chinese government repurposing the satellite’s sensitive technology for its own use.
Youssefzadeh and Javed were contacted in 2015 by executives at China Orient Asset Management Co., a financial firm owned by China’s Ministry of Finance, expressing interest in the satellite.
Javed was in Beijing days later meeting with the president of the company and Geng Zhiyuan, a man whose father was a leader in China’s military in 1979 and employed Xi Jinping as his personal secretary. Xi is now the president of Communist China.
Due to certain U.S. laws involving satellite technology, China Orient isn’t allowed to hold a large stake in the company or satellite, so Global IP planned to receive China Orient’s money through a separate shell company, according to WSJ.
A subsidiary of China Orient, Dong Yin Development, lent $175 million to Bronzelink, the company set up in the British Virgin Islands. Bronzelink then bought 75 percent of Global IP.
Global IP used the investment to pay Boeing to build the satellite.
After relations with China Orient soured, Youssefzadeh and Javed resigned in 2017 from Global IP and sued Dong Yin the following year, alleging the subsidiary was illegally trying to usurp the satellite project.
China’s involvement in the project has worried U.S. officials, who warn that the country often engages in illicit activities in an attempt to gain access to highly sought after technologies.
“It’s a multi-pronged, multi-faceted kind of attack,” Eric Hirschhorn, who served as an undersecretary at the Commerce Department during the Obama administration, told WSJ. “They’ve [China] got their hand in every pocket they can find, their nose in every crack, their eye in every keyhole.”
Right before Global IP was to sign its contract with Boeing in August 2016, Youssefzadeh and Javed received unexpected visitors in Los Angeles.
Multiple new Global IP board members, led by a Chinese lawyer who represents China Orient, demanded access to the Boeing contract and requested to see Boeing’s satellite designs, WSJ reported.
Youssefzadeh and Javed told the crew that they were already given authorization from the board to move forward with production and were confused why this team was sent to obtain more information.
The two Americans refused the multiple requests to look over the contract, which they knew contained hundreds of detailed pages on how Boeing’s technology and programs work. China is blocked from seeing this type of information under export control laws.
Executives at Bronzelink, which owned 75 percent of Global IP at the time of the visit, eventually began to make similar requests, Youssefzadeh and Javed said.
Boeing’s cancellation comes as China was moving to take tighter control of the satellite project, and in doing so obtain access to the sensitive and advanced technology.
This proves you can make jokes about Gay’s and stay in Hollywood.
Comedian and A-list actor Kevin Hart announced early Friday morning that he “made the choice to step down” from hosting the 91st Academy Awards amid a backlash over the resurfacing of previous gay jokes and tweets.
“I have made the choice to step down from hosting this year’s Oscar’s….this is because I do not want to be a distraction on a night that should be celebrated by so many amazing talented artists,” Kevin Hart tweeted. “I sincerely apologize to the LGBTQ community for my insensitive words from my past.”
I have made the choice to step down from hosting this year’s Oscar’s….this is because I do not want to be a distraction on a night that should be celebrated by so many amazing talented artists. I sincerely apologize to the LGBTQ community for my insensitive words from my past.
“I’m sorry that I hurt people.. I am evolving and want to continue to do so. My goal is to bring people together not tear us apart. Much love & appreciation to the Academy,” the Night School star added. “I hope we can meet again.”
I’m sorry that I hurt people.. I am evolving and want to continue to do so. My goal is to bring people together not tear us apart.Much love & appreciation to the Academy.I hope we can meet again.
Hart’s response to criticism over earlier tweets deemed homophobic by some on Thursday further inflamed a backlash to the comedian two days after he was named host of the upcoming Academy Awards.
On Thursday, Hart wrote on Instagram that critics should “stop being negative” after years-old tweets surfaced in which he used gay slurs. In an accompanying video, a shirtless Hart lounging in bed warily said he wasn’t going to “let the craziness frustrate me.”
“I’m almost 40 years old. If you don’t believe that people change, grow, evolve? I don’t know what to tell you,” said Hart, who added, in all-caps: “I love everybody.”
Hart has since deleted some of the anti-gay tweets, mostly dated from 2009-2011. But they had already been screen-captured and been shared online. In 2011, he wrote in a since-deleted tweet: “Yo if my son comes home & try’s 2 play with my daughters doll house I’m going 2 break it over his head & say n my voice ’stop that’s gay.”
Hart’s attitudes about homosexuality were also a well-known part of his stand-up act. In the 2010 special Seriously Funny, he said “one of my biggest fears is my son growing up and being gay.”
“Keep in mind, I’m not homophobic, I have nothing against gay people, do what you want to do, but me, being a heterosexual male, if I can prevent my son from being gay, I will,” Hart said.
GLAAD, the advocacy group for LGBTQ rights, said Thursday that it has reached out to Oscars broadcaster ABC, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts, and Sciences and Hart’s management to “discuss Kevin’s anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and record.”
Comedian and actor Billy Eichner was among those on social media who were disappointed with Hart’s response.
“This is not good. A simple, authentic apology showing any bit of understanding or remorse would have been so simple,” Eichner said. “Like I tweeted a few weeks ago, Hollywood still has a real problem with gay men. On the surface it may not look like it. Underneath, it’s far more complicated.”
This is not good. A simple, authentic apology showing any bit of understanding or remorse would have been so simple. Like I tweeted a few weeks ago, Hollywood still has a real problem with gay men. On the surface it may not look like it. Underneath, it’s far more complicated.
The film academy on Tuesday announced Hart as host to its February ceremony. Representatives for the academy and for ABC didn’t respond to messages Thursday.
