Thread: Comey Disputes New York Times Article About Russia Investigation

Comey Disputes New York Times Article About Russia Investigation

By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT, MARK MAZZETTI and MATT APUZZO
JUNE 8, 2017

James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, on Thursday disputed an article that appeared in February in The New York Times about contacts between President Trump’s advisers and Russian intelligence officials.

Answering a question about the Times article during an appearance before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mr. Comey said that “in the main, it was not true.”

The article was the first to reveal direct contacts between Trump advisers and Russian officials before the election — contacts that are now at the heart of F.B.I. and congressional investigations. Multiple news outlets have since published accounts that support the main elements of The Times’s article, including information about phone calls and in-person meetings between Mr. Trump’s advisers and Russians, some believed to be connected to Russian intelligence.

Mr. Comey did not say exactly what he believed was incorrect about the article, which was based on information from four current and former American officials, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because the information was classified. The original sources could not immediately be reached after Mr. Comey’s remarks, but in the months since the article was published, they have indicated that they believed the account was solid.

One possible area of dispute is the description of the Russians involved. Some law enforcement officials took issue with the Times account in the days after it was published, saying that the intelligence was still murky, and that the Russians who were in contact with Mr. Trump’s advisers did not meet the F.B.I.’s black-and-white standard of who can be considered an “intelligence officer.”

But several former American intelligence and law enforcement officials have said that other American agencies have a broader definition, especially when it comes to Russia. They said that President Vladimir V. Putin uses an extensive network of government officials and private citizens with deep links to Russian spy services who supplement the intelligence apparatus and report back to the Kremlin. At least some of the contacts, they said, involved Russians who fit into this category.

In testimony last month before the House Intelligence Committee, John O. Brennan, the former C.I.A. director, said he became concerned last year about direct attempts by the Russian government to recruit members of Mr. Trump’s campaign.

“I encountered and am aware of information and intelligence that revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials and U.S. persons involved in the Trump campaign that I was concerned about because of known Russian efforts to suborn such individuals,” he told lawmakers. “And it raised questions in my mind again whether or not the Russians were able to gain the cooperation of those individuals.”

Based on his answers to one Republican senator on Thursday, it also seemed that Mr. Comey may have disagreed with The Times’s description of the evidence for such contacts. The Times article said that American authorities had relied on “phone records and intercepted calls” to amass evidence of the contacts between Mr. Trump’s advisers and Russians. But Mr. Comey offered no elaboration on this point.

Subsequent reporting by The Times and other news outlets has revealed that, last year, American investigators also received information from human intelligence sources and foreign spy services.

The Feb. 14 story said that there was no evidence of collusion between the Trump advisers and Russia’s campaign to disrupt last year’s presidential election, a fact that officials have since said publicly. The F.B.I. declined to address Mr. Comey’s comments about the article.

Since that article was published, there have been revelations in The Times and other news outlets reporting that Mr. Trump’s advisers were in contact with Russian intelligence.

Last year, for example, the F.B.I. obtained a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to monitor the communications of Carter Page, a former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser. Law enforcement officials believed the Russian government was trying to recruit Mr. Page as a foreign agent.

A former senior American intelligence official said that Mr. Page met with at least one suspected intelligence officer during two trips he took to Russia last year, although it is unclear whether Mr. Page knew about the identity or the motivations of the Russian.

Mr. Page has repeatedly declined to say whom he met and spoke with during one of the trips, to Moscow last summer. He has described them only as “mostly scholars.”

During the transition, Jared Kushner, a senior aide, met privately with the head of a Russian bank with deep ties to Russian intelligence, seeking a direct line of communication to the Kremlin. The banker, Sergey N. Gorkov, is a graduate of Russia’s spy school.

Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime Trump adviser, exchanged Twitter messages last year with Guccifer 2.0, an online persona that authorities say was a front for Russian intelligence officials.

During the hearing, Mr. Comey said there were inaccuracies in many articles about the F.B.I.’s Russia investigation, a problem he attributed in part to anonymous sources discussing classified information.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/08/u...ssia.html?_r=0

The whole thing is a fabrication. Trump is right, the "Russians interfering with our election" is a DNC Hoax to excuse why they lost the election.

There is no evidence of anything. No crime, no wrong-doing, no collusion, no collaboration, no nothing. All these months, over a year, spying on phone calls, "intercepts", on and on and on and .... nothing. This has been going on for more than a year, it started last year under Obama Administration. Nothing. No evidence of collusion, no evidence of Russia interfering with the election, no evidence of any impact on the election, nothing.

The FBI has been played for fools, the US Congress has been played for fools, Clapper has been played for a fool, the New York Times and Washington Post have been played for fools .... they've all been played for fools by Jim Comey. Where Comey made his mistake was believing he could play Trump the same way Comey played his agency, the Congress, and the CORRUPT MEDIA. Trump is different, he's actually very very smart, he's also street wise, he's not a government politician that falls for "ALL TALK", he's a businessman politician that goes for "ALL ACTION", the bottom-line, the results, the hard core evidence, and he is a very good businessman politician, probably one of the best ever.

The reason Comey was "uncomfortable" is because Comey saw that in his first meeting with Trump on January 6th at Trump Tower. Comey knew right then, that he Comey was the one whose head would soon be on the chopping block, it was just a matter of time. And Trump played him, dragged it out, toyed with him like a cat playing with a mouse.

I had to laugh at Comey in his hearing the other day claiming he thought it was okay to leak government work product because he was a "private citizen". Really? You mean like all the "private citizens" you're accusing of collusion with the Russians because they made a speech in Russia at a gala arranged through a speaker's bureau like Mike Flynn or spoke at a university graduation ceremony like Carter Page or did consulting work for the Ukrainian President like Paul Manafort, or met with the Russian Ambassador and the President of a Russian Bank like Jared Kushner, or spoke with the Russian Ambassador on the telephone or did business with a Dutch company with "ties to Turkey" like Mike Flynn? Yeah, they were all private US Citizens, free people with the absolute free right to give speeches and meet with foreign bank officials, foreign diplomats and do business with Dutch companies with ties to Turkey and Ukrainian officials running for office.

So yes, Comey is a "private citizen" exactly like all the people his agency is investigating, defaming and trying to destroy. I think it's pretty cool that Comey will now be investigated for not only what he does as a "private citizen" but perhaps even more importantly what he did while he was Director of the FBI.

There's an ole saying, and "lordy", if anyone should know this it should be someone with a law degree and thinks of himself as some type of law enforcement and "counter-intelligence" expert: "what goes around, comes around." You abuse these people waging your own inexplicable McCarthyism character assassination, as you have probably done throughout your entire tenure at the FBI and Department of Justice, and eventually someone arrives on the scene in DC who says "hey, that's wrong, it's time to shut this crazy prick down."

And lo and behold and "lordy", too, who arrives on the scene to do just that? Donald J Trump, who just happens to be President of the United States and your Boss.

LOL!! This is going to get good. Stay Tuned.