James Comey’s memos leak, inflame special counsel commotion

Updated at 1:25 p.m. on April 20

Memos drafted by former FBI Director James Comey, recounting several conversations he had with President Trump before getting fired last spring, tell of a man obsessed with an intelligence dossier containing salacious allegations about his ties to Russia and securing loyalty from those who worked in his administration.

The memos were sent to Congress Thursday evening after top Republican committee chairmen demanded the Justice Department hand them over, and in short order they were shared with the media, intensifying a heated debate on the special counsel investigation and leaks.

The Washington Examiner obtained the 15 pages of redacted memos which document the seven conversations Comey had with Trump from Jan. 7, 2017, through April 11, 2017.

In his notes, Comey wrote about how Trump repeatedly broached the topic of the Trump dossier, a salacious and largely unverified document written by ex-British spy Christopher Steele and partially funded by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign, which asserted that Russia had leverage on Trump with damaging information. That included the “Golden Showers thing,” a reference to an alleged encounter at a hotel in Moscow where he ordered Russian prostitutes to pee on a bed used by former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama.

“The President said ‘the hookers thing’ is nonsense but that Putin had told him ‘we have some of the most beautiful hookers in the world,’” Comey wrote about at one point, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Ex FBI Director James Comey s Memos by Anonymous qhCEBvau on Scribd

Comey recalled Trump griping in January 2017 about the “serious judgment issues” of then-former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who soon after resigned under pressure and later pleaded guilty in federal court for to lying to the FBI about his contacts with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

Amid banter about cracking down on leaks, Trump quipped about throwing journalists in jail, according to a February 2017 memo.

[James Comey: Rudy Giuliani remarks prompted FBI leaks investigation]

The notes were also telling about Comey himself, who claimed he once told Trump, “I don’t do sneaky things, I don’t leak, I don’t do weasel moves.” Despite this assurance, Comey did leak at least one memo to a professor friend of his shortly after he was fired in May. The professor then shared its contents with the New York Times. Comey later testified that he had hoped this would lead to the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Russian meddling in the 2016 election. He got his wish with Robert Mueller.

Comey’s leaking has become the center of a debate in Washington about whether he acted improperly and created unsound footing for the special counsel probe.

“Tragedy that a special counsel investigation was launched by leaking of the memos (which Comey has admitted). No basis in the memos to trigger a criminal investigation & it is to the discredit of [Deputy Attorney General Rod] Rosenstein that he caved to the pressure of the media/Democrats & appointed Mueller,” tweeted Rep. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., Thursday evening.

Like DeSantis, Trump accused Comey of leaking classified information. He also declared Thursday evening that the memos show his 2016 campaign did not collude with Russia — something which Mueller’s team is examining — and proves he did not attempt to obstruct justice. “James Comey Memos just out and show clearly that there was NO COLLUSION and NO OBSTRUCTION. Also, he leaked classified information. WOW! Will the Witch Hunt continue?” Trump tweeted.


Despite the uproar, one of the memos in question in which Comey recalls Trump asking him to back off the investigation into Flynn, is marked unclassified — a point that is lost among some Republicans, argued former Justice Department spokesman Matt Miller on MSNBC late Thursday. “That memo was actually unclassified and that’s important because this has been the subject of a good bit of dispute, a good bit of criticism from Republicans on the hill who tried to argue that he leaked classified information by doing so,” he said.

Comey shared four of his memos with Daniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor who is now a professor at Columbia Law School. A Wall Street Journal report Friday said the DOJ inspector general has begun an investigation into classification issues regarding the memos because at least two of the memos were found to have classified information.

Following the leak of the memos, the three Republican chairmen who led the push to secure Comey’s notes, accused the former FBI director of harboring a bias against Trump, which they said was evident by his decision not to memorialize his conversations with other top officials, including former President Barack Obama, former Attorney General Lynch, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, his former deputy, Andrew McCabe. This, wrote House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., showed Comey exhibited “at least two different standards in his interactions with others.”

McCabe was fired last month after being found to have repeatedly “lacked candor” about the authorization of leaks to the media by a recently released Justice Department inspector general report.

[11 House Republicans sign letter demanding prosecutions for Clinton, Comey, McCabe, and others]

Pushing back against the Republican front was Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., the ranking member of the oversight panel. He hailed Comey’s memos as providing “strong corroborating evidence of everything he said about President Trump — that the President wanted his personal loyalty, that he wanted to end the Russia investigation, and that he wanted Michael Flynn to walk.”

Noting that Comey’s account was corroborated by handwritten notes from another top DOJ official at the time, Dana Boente, Cummings said, “President Trump’s interference was a blatant effort to deny justice, and Director Comey was right to document it as it happened — in real time.”

[Memo: James Comey said Eric Holder ‘smarter and more sophisticated and smoother’ than Loretta Lynch]

The memos’ public unveiling came just days after the release of Comey’s book, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership, which recounts his experiences working at the FBI and expands his side of the story about his relationship with Trump.

As part of the accompanying book tour and TV interview blitz, Comey sat down with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, who grilled him about the memos right after they were leaked Thursday evening.

[Rachel Maddow rips James Comey for placing ‘misinformed’ people before the ‘truth’ about Loretta Lynch]

Comey mentioned he hadn’t had access to his memos in a while and couldn’t recall if they mentioned anything significant that was mentioned in his book. He told Maddow that, with the leak of his memos, he was “Okay with transparency,” and said he assumes the DOJ “went through the steps to make sure that it wasn’t jeopardizing an ongoing investigation.”


He admitted that writing these memos was not something an FBI agent would normally do, but he noted he was director and not an agent.

Comey also explained why he felt the need to write memos of his interactions with Trump, mentioning he was worried about speaking alone with the president about “things that were relating to him and to the FBI’s core responsibilities” and “given the nature of the person, as I understood the president-elect, he might not tell the truth about those if it ever became an issue.”

Kelly Cohen, Diana Stancy Correll, and Katie Leach contributed to this report.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with details from a Wall Street Journal report on Friday that says the DOJ IG is investigating James Comey’s memos.

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