Former FBI Director James Comey flatly rejected President Trump’s claim that the bureau committed “treason” in its handling of the counterintelligence investigation into Trump’s 2016 campaign.
In a sharply worded op-ed on Tuesday, Comey repeatedly assailed the “dumb lies” that claim there was a politically motivated effort to undermine Trump’s campaign.
“There was no corruption. There was no treason. There was no attempted coup. Those are lies, and dumb lies at that. There were just good people trying to figure out what was true, under unprecedented circumstances,” Comey wrote in the Washington Post.
The opinion piece makes the case that Comey and his subordinates made decisions that were disadvantageous to both Trump and his 2016 election rival Hillary Clinton, therefore knocking down “deep state” narrative.
It comes days after Trump claimed that certain leaders in the bureau, including Comey, committed “treason” by trying to “take down” his campaign and the president’s declassification order related to the Russia investigation.
In defiance of Attorney General William Barr’s assertion that there was “spying” on Trump’s campaign, Comey said, “We investigated. We didn’t gather information about the campaign’s strategy. We didn’t ‘spy’ on anyone’s campaign. We investigated to see whether it was true that Americans associated with the campaign had taken the Russians up on any offer of help.”
[Related: Liz Cheney: Strzok-Page texts sound ‘an awful lot like a coup and it could well be treason’]
On Thursday, Trump empowered Attorney General William Barr with the “full and complete authority to declassify information” related to the origins of the federal investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. Barr has tasked U.S. Attorney John Durham with leading the review and is working closely with the Justice Department inspector general’s Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuse inquiry.
Although conservative pundits and Republican investigators believe information will be revealed that will show misconduct by Comey, the former FBI director welcomed the scrutiny and maintained that he did nothing wrong.
“[G]o ahead, investigate the investigators, if you must. When those investigations are over, they will find the work was done appropriately and focused only on discerning the truth of very serious allegations,” Comey wrote.
