James Comey downplayed whatever information U.S. Attorney John Durham might have turned up on him in the Justice Department inquiry into the Russia investigation.
The former FBI director, who was in charge of the bureau when it opened up the counterintelligence investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia in the summer of 2016, was asked Sunday if he is a “witness or a target” or has been questioned by Durham.
“I have no idea,” Comey said in an interview Sunday on CBS News. “I’ve had no contact with him and haven’t talked to him.”
This follows news that former CIA Director John Brennan was interviewed by the federal prosecutor’s team on Friday. A statement put out by Nick Shapiro, Brennan’s former deputy chief of staff and senior adviser, said Brennan was interviewed for eight hours at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, and was told he is not a “subject or a target” of a criminal investigation, but rather is only a witness to events under review.
According to Shapiro, Brennan was asked about the intelligence-related activities undertaken by CIA before the 2016 presidential election, as well as the Intelligence Community Assessment published in early January 2017, which Comey helped put together along with the National Security Agency.
Picking up on Comey saying he has not been approached by Durham’s investigations, Margaret Brennan, the moderator of Face the Nation, asked the former FBI director if he believes that means he is a “target” of the inquiry.
“I can’t imagine that I’m a target. I saw the news report that John Brennan was a witness,” Comey said. “Given that I know what happened during 2016, which was a bunch of people trying to do the right thing consistent with the law, I’m not worried at all about that investigation of the investigation. Next, I’m sure will be an investigation of the investigation of the investigation. They just want to have an investigation to talk about.”
Comey, like Brennan, has become a vocal critic of President Trump, who fired him in May 2017. Comey appeared on Face the Nation the same day it was revealed that FBI agents had sought Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act authority in 2014 and 2015 related to a foreign government’s suspected efforts to influence and funnel money to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. But declassified documents suggest the FBI’s “7th floor” leadership intervened, and the FBI briefed Clinton’s legal team on the threat instead, in what Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham dubbed a “clear double standard.”
Durham was appointed by Attorney General William Barr last year to investigate the origins of the Russia investigation. The administrative review was upgraded into a criminal inquiry in the fall, and Durham secured his first plea deal last week with a former FBI lawyer who fraudulently doctored a CIA email in the process of seeking renewed authority to wiretap former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
Durham, the top federal prosecutor in Connecticut, is looking into how British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s discredited dossier was used in the 2017 assessment, why Comey and his deputy, Andrew McCabe, insisted on it being part of the assessment, how allegations from the dossier ended up in an appendix of the assessment, and likely whether Brennan, Comey, or anyone else made misleading assertions about the research’s use. Comey was not asked about Steele on Sunday.
Both former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates recently testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that they would never have signed the Page FISA warrant applications if they knew then what they know now. Recent revelations about the FBI’s early 2017 interviews with Steele’s primary subsource, revealed to be Russian-trained lawyer Igor Danchenko, show that the bureau was aware of severe doubts cast on the credibility of Steele’s allegations, and that Steele’s dossier may have been compromised by Russian disinformation. Comey was not asked about this either on Sunday.
Comey and the Yates approved the initial October 2016 FISA application as well as the January 2017 FISA warrant renewal. Comey also signed the April 2017 FISA renewal for the FBI before being fired.
Speaking about Steele’s dossier, Yates recently testified “yes it was” critically important to obtaining the FISA, which contradicts Comey’s statements in past interviews in which he sought to downplay the dossier’s importance.
In a report released in December, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz “determined that the Crossfire Hurricane team’s receipt of Steele’s election reporting … played a central and essential role in the FBI’s and Department’s decision to seek the FISA order.”
In her testimony earlier this month, Yates said Comey went “rogue” with the FBI’s interview of retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn in January 2017.
Horowitz’s December report also criticized the DOJ and the FBI for 17 “significant errors and omissions” related to the FISA warrants against Page. In a prior audit, Horowitz condemned Comey for the “unauthorized disclosure of sensitive investigative information … in order to achieve a personally desired outcome” when he leaked his memos to prompt a special counsel.
Democrats and some national security veterans have raised concerns that Trump and Barr are trying to set up an “October surprise” with Durham’s inquiry to disrupt the 2020 election.
Barr, who has said he believes the federal “law enforcement and intelligence apparatus were involved in advancing a false and utterly baseless Russian collusion narrative against the president,” has dismissed those fears, stressing that neither Trump nor former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee, are targets of the investigation.
