Did James Comey just reveal more than he meant to?

A recent town hall–style meeting with CNN's Anderson Cooper, taking questions from college students, had Comey telling the youngster it was "totally normal" for the FBI to spy on presidential campaigns.

According to a report in the Daily Caller, Comey responded to a student inquiring about the validity of sending investigative agents to then-candidate Donald Trump's campaign this way:

Yeah, I'm not going to comment on a particular investigative step, because that's for the bureau to do, and I'm not in the government any longer, but the FBI doesn't spy to begin with. The FBI investigates. And you got to remember where we were in the end of July 2016," Comey answered. "We knew the Russians were engaged in a massive effort to attack our democracy, and then we learn from an allied ambassador that one of President Trump-elect — candidate Trump's advisers had been talking to a Russian representative long before that about dirt they had on Hillary Clinton that the Russians wanted to make available.

And in response to a bit of probing from Anderson Cooper about the extremism of putting a spy into a presidential campaign, Comey added this (emphasis mine):

No, it's a reasonable — that was the guy, Papadopoulos, who was the subject of the information we got from the Australians that he had talked to the Russians," Comey added. "I don't remember talking about that particular step with my team. I knew they were trying to see if they could check it out. That's a totally normal step. See if you can get somebody close to the person and see if they'll confirm what we heard from the Australians.

One wonders what the heck went on over there with a Comey answer like that.  The FBI couldn't assume that someone such as Papadopoulos, an American with pro-American views they should have known about, and who had ambitions of joining the Trump team, might not jump to cooperate with the FBI on bagging a Russian spy if asked?  Any right-winger would; lefties are the ones who like to defend anti-American socialist dictators and mullahs.  The Republicans like to wrap themselves in the flag.  Why didn't they go to the most normal route for finding out what they needed to find out and ask him directly?

Maybe it's because there was something else going on: the problem seems to be that Papadopoulos was fed the information he disclosed to Australian ambassador to the U.K. Alexander Downer by what's apparently another U.S. agent, Josef Mifsud, who Rep. Devin Nunes says has ties to the State Department.  Topping it off, Papadopoulos said he believed that Downer was an American "asset" as well, sent to make contact with Papadopoulos after Mifsud fed Papadopoulos the information.  That's quite a conveyor belt.  We have American spy one, Mifsud, handing info over to Papadopoulos the Trump man, and the latter passing through what he got from Mifsud to American spy two, Alexander Downer.  All to Get Trump. 

First question: Can't these people get any real Russian agents to do their skullduggery for them?  Do they have any?  Seems they don't have such assets, which is not a good thing for Putin to know, but here we have Comey letting the cat out of the bag on that with his effort to justify bureau campaign meddling, as well as the highly questionable American spy–Trump operative–American spy dynamic to take down Trump.

And Comey calls this 'totally normal'?  If it's totally normal, how many other presidential campaigns was he doing this on?  There actually was a report, which came and went, suggesting that the FBI also had a spy in the Ted Cruz campaign.  How many others did they try this on? 

Everyone knows that you don't spy on presidential campaigns, at least not if you are professional.  The fact that ordinary G-Men were not involved in this, but FBI political operatives at the top, suggests some fast and loose activity from the elites.

Now the word is out: the FBI spies on campaigns, and Comey tells us it's all justified.