Former FBI Director James Comey may have misled Congress when he said he never felt the need to write detailed memos about his conversations with presidents before President Trump.
John Hinderaker, an attorney who writes for Powerline, pointed out in a post on the blog Comey had an extensive conversation with former President George W. Bush that he documented in a two-page memo. That’s contrary to what he told the Senate Intelligence in written testimony last week.
Comey said he only fired off a short email to colleagues after speaking with Bush. However, a book called “Angler” by Barton Gellman mentioned a two-page memo Comey wrote following that conversation with Bush is published.
The conversation was regarding the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance program, which Comey opposed. In that conversation, Comey reportedly told Bush that he was being misled by his advisors and many Department of Justice employees were prepared to resign over the program, including Comey himself who was serving as deputy attorney general at the time.
“Comey’s assertion that this ‘quick email’ just told his staff ‘there was something going on’ was false,” Hinderaker writes. “The email was substantive: it documented Comey’s account of the conversation he had with the president. Comey didn’t wait five minutes to create a record of what he said to the president, and what the president said to him.”
Hinderaker then went on to publish much of the dialogue recorded by Comey during the conversation between himself and Bush, which was taken from “unclassified notes describing Comey’s report of the meeting shortly afterward.”
The attorney writes that it’s not clear if the notes were Comey’s or someone else’ it is crystal clear that Comey rendered a “report” on his meeting that included these extensive, self-serving quotes, and that Comey’s side of the story was preserved in notes–unclassified notes, that sounds familiar!–against any possible future contingency.”
He added, “In short, Comey’s statement to the Senate Intelligence Committee that ‘I didn’t feel, with President Bush, the need to document it in that way’ was false. He did document his story about his meeting with President Bush, in great detail, in a ‘report’ that was turned into ‘unclassified notes.'”
