As committee Republicans fixated on Hillary Clinton’s emails, the Steele Dossier and text messages between two FBI agents accused of expressing bias against Donald Trump, Comey turned the proceeding into a defense of the special counsel’s investigation and the integrity of the Department of Justice. No wonder President Trump launched into yet another Twitter tirade on Sunday morning, labeling Comey’s testimony “so untruthful!” while complaining that 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!”

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!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 9, 2018

With all of the news happening this past week, reviewing a 235-page transcript was probably not at the top of a lot of people’s to-do lists. With that in mind, here are 10 takeaways that are worth a second look.

7.  As has been the case for two years, Republicans on the Oversight and Judiciary Committee used their time with Comey to try and undermine the Russia probe. Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., incoming oversight chairman, gave Comey a chance to define the threat posed by Russia. “The aim of the Russian effort in 2016 was to destabilize, undermine, damage our democracy,” Comey told the committees. “That was their overwhelming goal. And so you have a foreign nation that is attacking the United States of America in an effort to undermine that which is essentially us, our democratic process. So that’s a very serious threat. And understanding whether any Americans were part of that effort is incredibly important because the threat of those Americans by virtue of their alliance with the Russians would pose to our country.”

8.  Cummings followed up by asking what would happen if the special counsel’s investigation was impeded or ended prematurely. “Well, in my opinion, it would undermine our national security by not holding accountable people who might have been involved in either the Russians or people who worked with them, first,” Comey responded. “And second, it would send an absolutely appalling message about the rule of law in this country of ours. … The Russians’ goal was for everyone in the world to have doubt about the nature and credibility of the American democracy, to dirty it up so it’s not a shining city on the hill. So their attack had implications for that, the role of the American democratic experiment. And if someone were to order it stopped, the investigation into that, it would have a similar effect.”

These are but 2 of the revelations from James Comey’s interview with the House Oversight and Judiciary committees behind closed doors on 07 December 2018.  Click through for the others.  If you want to peruse the transcript you can HERE. 

The Globe and Mail — The context of the arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou – a dangerous move by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration in its intensifying conflict with China – matters enormously. The United States requested that Canada arrest Ms. Meng in the Vancouver airport en route to Mexico from Hong Kong, and then extradite her to the United States. Such a move is almost a U.S. declaration of war on China’s business community. Nearly unprecedented, it puts American business people travelling abroad at much greater risk of such actions by other countries.  …

Quite transparently, the U.S. action against Ms. Meng really seems to be part of the Trump administration’s broader attempt to undermine China’s economy by imposing tariffs, closing Western markets to Chinese high-technology exports and blocking Chinese purchases of U.S. and European technology companies. One can say, without exaggeration, that this is part of an economic war on China – and a reckless one at that.

Huawei is one of China’s most important technology companies and therefore a prime target in the Trump administration’s effort to slow or stop China’s advance into several high-technology sectors. America’s motivations in this economic war are partly commercial – to protect and favour laggard U.S. companies – and partly geopolitical. They certainly have nothing to do with upholding the international rule of law.

The U.S. appears to be trying to target Huawei especially because of the company’s success in marketing cutting-edge 5G technologies globally. The U.S. claims the company poses a specific security risk through hidden surveillance capabilities in its hardware and software. Yet the U.S. government has provided no evidence for this claim. …

…UN Security Council Resolution 2231 calls on all countries to drop sanctions on Iran as part of the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement. Yet the United States. – and only the United States – now rejects the Security Council’s role in such matters. The Trump administration, not Huawei or China, is today’s greatest threat to the international rule of law, and therefore to global peace. [emphasis mine]

Click through for further details.  I don’t know how much coverage this is getting in the US, but in Canada it is getting a lot of coverage.  I have a great deal of disdain for the pernicious ham handed Trump who has no regard for the rule of law except for how to break it when he said 

“If I think it’s good for the country, if I think it’s good for what will be certainly the largest trade deal ever made – which is a very important thing – what’s good for national security – I would certainly intervene if I thought it was necessary,” … 

For Trump, his foreign relations is all transactional — what do I get out of this through what does the country get out of it.  He wants the title of the great deal maker at somebody else’s expense, in this case Canada and two of her citizens.

I want to say to him, “Stay the hell out of Canadian affairs!”

This video from CTV News.  Additional material from The Globe and Mail, The Globe and Mail (2) and this second video from CTV News.(which refuses to embed)

Trump is a great threat to world peace.