Thread: Comey leaked memos to prompt special counsel

Comey leaked memos to prompt special counsel

By Katie Bo Williams - 06/08/17 11:46 AM EDT

Shortly after his dismissal as head of the FBI, James Comey authorized "a close friend" to leak the contents of his memos to the press in order to prompt a special counsel investigation.

The memo, written contemporaneously, documented Comey's Oval Office meeting with President Trump during which the president allegedly asked him to drop the investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

"I asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter," Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday. "I didn't do it myself for a variety of reasons but I asked him to because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel."

The New York Times first reported the memos on May 16. The Justice Department appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel two days later.

Comey characterized the leaker as a close friend who is a professor at Columbia Law School. The former director is known to be friends with Daniel C. Richman, a Columbia professor and former federal prosecutor who served as chief appellate attorney in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York.

Comey was moved to act after the president tweeted a cryptic threat that he, Comey, "better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!”

The tweet came after a series of press reports documenting a separate White House encounter with the president, during which Trump allegedly asked Comey to pledge his loyalty.

At that point, Comey had kept silent on the Oval Office meeting — largely because senior FBI leadership agreed that there was no way to corroborate his account, he said.

According to Comey, a few days after the tweet, he woke up "in the middle of the night" with the realization that there might be a tape of his conversation with the president.

"I needed to get that out into the public square," he said.

Pressed on the reasoning behind his decision to leak the memos, Comey explained that “as a private citizen I thought it important to share that, I wanted to get it out." He stressed that his memos were unclassified, personal "recollection."

He also said that he did not release the memos to the media himself because he "worried it'd be like feeding seagulls at the beach."

http://thehill.com/policy/national-s...pecial-counsel

Creepy Comey is Crazy.

Some other thoughts:

1. When Senate Committee staff review the testimony they're going to find numerous instances of where Comey impeached himself.

2. Comey said he wrote the government memos on his government lap-top after the first government meeting which was a classified meeting about classified information with the President of the United States and is one of the memos he gave his "friend" to release to the press.

3. Comey had ulterior motives to leak the government memos to his friend to release to the press according to this testimony today which was to induce the appointment of a Special Counsel. Therefore, he had the ultimate goal of writing his memos in such a manner as to create the suspicion of obstruction of justice to create a cause for impeachment of the President.

4. Comey implicated FBI staff as the leakers all this time. Comey is not helping the FBI, he is hurting the FBI. The FBI doesn't have the memos, that's why they can't produce them for Congress. They're on Comey's lap-top.

5. Comey still has his government lap-top. Otherwise he would not have physical possession of the memos after he was fired. The government doesn't have the memos without having the lap-top. So where is the lap-top now? The lap-top is government property.

6. Because Comey has his government lap-top, he can manipulate his memos right up to the time he printed them out and handed them to his friend. Because he had possession of them after he was fired, leaked them to the press, did so with the express purpose of prompting a Special Counsel investigation to bring down a Presidency. This is interfering with our election, the constructs of the Constitution, and our Republic. Comey is a Clinton Puppet and has been since Whitewater. The Memos now have no contemporaneous authenticity, and are now after this hearing nothing but carefully fabricated gossip.

7. Comey stated under oath he no longer has copies of the memos, only his "friend" and the Special Counsel. Why wouldn't he keep copies of his Memos before giving them to the Special Counsel?

8. Comey created the memos after he left the FBI to set up the hysteria for a Special Counsel. Everyone expected the Memos to be part of the FBI government documents. We find out today, the FBI never had possession of these Memos in their evidence bins. These memos were created on Comey's personal government lap-top, so Comey claims. How did he access them? Wouldn't the FBI have cut off his lap-top upon receipt of the firing letter? Of course. Ex-FBI employees can't access their government lap-tops once they're fired. The government lap-top would be confiscated by the government and taken into physical custody by the FBI. So how did Comey have access to his "Memos"? He wouldn't have had access to his "Memos" on the government lap-top computer to "leak" to his "friend" at Columbia University, his access code would have been denied by the FBI.

9. Comey also testified today that he thought the President's comments about the Flynn investigation was a "directive", and that he didn't follow through on and follow that directive, not only he himself didn't follow-through but that top management of the FBI refused to follow through on the directive. It is unacceptable for anyone in the federal government to refuse to follow a legal "directive" by the President of the United States, especially when it applies to national security, foreign policy, civil rights and justice. An order from the President is an order to be followed, whether you as a government employee agree with it or not, whether it fits your narratives or not, whether it complies with your personal or professional goals, or not. If you disagree for whatever reason, then it is your obligation to resign and walk away, not stay on and defy the President. The suggestion or directive from Trump was perfectly within his authority for prosecutorial discretion for Michael Flynn.

Michael Flynn is a victim of civil rights violations by the Obama Administration. Michael Flynn has done nothing wrong. He should still be our National Security Adviser. He isn't our NSA simply because a private conversation was spied on by NSA and leaked by the Obama Administration and then exploited to confuse communications between Flynn and Pence. Flynn has been fired and we don't even know what he said to Pence that differed from whatever the leakers are saying he said to the Russian Ambassador.

Trump was right to stand up for Flynn. That's who he is when he thinks someone is getting the shaft.