President Trump claimed Saturday that former FBI Director James Comey lied in the memos he wrote memorializing the conversations the two had last year.
“James Comey’s Memos are Classified, I did not Declassify them. They belong to our Government! Therefore, he broke the law! Additionally, he totally made up many of the things he said I said, and he is already a proven liar and leaker. Where are Memos on Clinton, Lynch & others?” the president said in a Saturday afternoon tweet.
James Comey’s Memos are Classified, I did not Declassify them. They belong to our Government! Therefore, he broke the law! Additionally, he totally made up many of the things he said I said, and he is already a proven liar and leaker. Where are Memos on Clinton, Lynch & others?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 21, 2018
The Justice Department released Comey’s memos, with redactions, to Congress on Thursday following a subpeona threat from three House Republican committee chairman.
Comey, who was fired by the Trump in May 2017, detailed in his memos face-to-face conversations and phone calls he had with Trump earlier that year.
In one conversation, Comey wrote Trump pressed him for a pledge to loyalty, and in another, Trump asked Comey to go easy on former White House national security adviser Mike Flynn, who has since pleaded guilty to lying to FBI investigators.
On Friday night, Trump chided Comey again, using the memos to question special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
“James Comey illegally leaked classified documents to the press in order to generate a Special Council? Therefore, the Special Council was established based on an illegal act? Really, does everybody know what that means?” Trump said on Twitter, with some typos.
The Wall Street Journal broke the news earlier in the day that two of Comey’s memos, which detail his conversations with Trump before he was fired in May of last year, were found to be classified by officials, prompting a Justice Department inspector general investigation. Before handing out the memos, Comey redacted information that he knew was classified from one of the memos. But after he left, the FBI upgraded it to the lowest level of classified: “confidential.”
