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Comey leaked memos to prompt special counsel
thehill.com ^ | 6/8/17 | Katie Bo Williams

Posted on 06/08/2017 10:18:33 AM PDT by ColdOne

Comey says he asked a friend to share content of his memo with a reporter because it would prompt special counsel https://t.co/I294rPNNjQ — The Situation Room (@CNNSitRoom) June 8, 2017

Shortly after his dismissal as head of the FBI, James Comey authorized "a close friend" to leak the contents of his memos to the press in order to prompt a special counsel investigation.

The memo, written contemporaneously, documented Comey's Oval Office meeting with President Trump during which the president allegedly asked him to drop the investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: comey; comeyleaker; comeyoutofcontrol; comeyspecialcounsel; comeytestimony
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To: ColdOne

Whose bright idea was it to name uniparty, Comey-bestie Mueller to this position?

Could be the single worst decision in the admin so far—and that’s saying something, given all the undermining, liberal staff hired.


81 posted on 06/08/2017 12:33:16 PM PDT by 9YearLurker
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To: CivilWarBrewing

Comey’s leak was after he was fired and after the Grassley hearing.


82 posted on 06/08/2017 12:36:28 PM PDT by semimojo
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To: Fantasywriter
COLLINS: And finally, did you show copies of your memos to anyone outside of the Department of Justice?

COMEY: Yes.

COLLINS: And to whom did you show copies?

COMEY: I asked -- the president tweeted on Friday, after I got fired, that I better hope there's not tapes. I woke up in the middle of the night on Monday night, because it didn't dawn on me originally that there might be corroboration for our conversation. There might be a tape.

And my judgment was, I needed to get that out into the public square. And so I asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter. Didn't do it myself, for a variety of reasons. But I asked him to, because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel. And so I asked a close friend of mine to do it.

Comey Hearing June 8, 2017 - NYT
83 posted on 06/08/2017 12:37:02 PM PDT by Cboldt
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To: Fantasywriter
-- If he described leaking an item publicly (he did) it would have been done in such a way as to let him off the hook. --

In his prepared statement, notice my emphasis of "unclassified."

I immediately prepared an unclassified memo of the conversation about Flynn and discussed the matter with FBI senior leadership.

This was the conversation that rattled him so much, he saw fit to NOT communicate back to ANYBODY in the chain of command. Not Sessions, not WH counsel, and not Trump, that ordering cessation of an investigation is improper.

Notice too, Comey is not bashful about countering the president. He did so at a (improper) request that the FBI investigate Trump. Improper becuse it is stepping on FBI independence.

He said he was considering ordering me to investigate the alleged incident to prove it didn't happen. I replied that he should give that careful thought because it might create a narrative that we were investigating him personally, which we weren't, and because it was very difficult to prove a negative. He said he would think about it and asked me to think about it.
Comey is a DEM operative, hence the ball of contradictions.
84 posted on 06/08/2017 12:43:38 PM PDT by Cboldt
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To: Delta 21

But are the leaks to his friends ILLEGAL? Is there a law against telling your discussion with the President? Is there a law of confidentiality when you speak with the President? Comey wouldn’t have even told that much if he weren’t legally covered today, right? Or ???


85 posted on 06/08/2017 12:44:01 PM PDT by Yaelle
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To: LS
?

Are you comfortable with Comey orchestrating the appointment of a Special Counsel through a leak via a friend to the NYT? Are you comfortable that a very friendly coworker, Bob Mueller, is that Special Counsel.

86 posted on 06/08/2017 12:44:26 PM PDT by Chgogal (I will NOT submit, therefore, Jihadists hate me.)
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To: petitfour
The friend is a professor at Columbia Law School, Daniel Richman.

Who Is Daniel Richman, the Columbia Professor Who Leaked Comey's Trump Memo? - NBC News

Richman said he's sure that politics didn't play a part when Comey decided to re-examine Clinton's emails.

"When you have an obligation to disclose or to qualify, you do it full-stop," Richman added. "You don't worry about timing, you don't worry about how it will be read or spun by others."

Odds are 80/20 he;s a liberal, just based on the fact he is a law school professor. He is openly a defender of Comey's decision to whitewash Hillary, and would find Rosenstien's legal analysis in the "fire Comey" letter to be incorrect.

87 posted on 06/08/2017 12:48:43 PM PDT by Cboldt
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To: Cboldt

Thanks for that very readable and informative presentation. It does give the appearance that Comey went out of his way to harm Trump while not incriminating himself. He’s a conniving guy, for sure.

I totally, completely agree with you that he’s a Democrat operative. And elsewhere it looks like his ‘mass of contradictions,’ caught up with him. He outright lied to his motivation for leaking the memo. He said it happened as a direct result of Trump’s comment about the tape recordings...a comment Trump made three days AFTER Comey leaked the memo.

Mr. I’ll-smear-Trump-without-incriminating-myseld didn’t do so well. His fat’s in the fire. The next few days should be very interesting.


88 posted on 06/08/2017 12:53:51 PM PDT by Fantasywriter (Any attempt to do forensic work using Inernet artifacts is fraught with pitfalls. JoeProbono)
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To: statered

Is it specifically a crime to share unclassified work? My understanding is that you can’t get locked up for that activity. To get prison time, the material would have to be classified.


89 posted on 06/08/2017 12:57:31 PM PDT by Fantasywriter (Any attempt to do forensic work using Inernet artifacts is fraught with pitfalls. JoeProbono)
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To: Fantasywriter
Here is another exchange that doesn't square.
COLLINS: OK, you mentioned that, from your very first meeting with the president, you decided to write a memo memorializing the conversation. What was it about that very first meeting that made you write a memo, when you had not done that with two previous presidents?

COMEY: As I said, a combination of things. A gut feeling is an important overlay on it (ph). But the circumstances -- that I was alone, the subject matter, and the nature of the person that I was interacting with and my read of that person.

(UNKNOWN): The nature of that person (ph)?

COMEY: Yeah, and -- and -- and, really, just a gut feel, laying on top of all of that, that this -- it's going to be important, to protect this organization, that I make records of this.

The first meeting, the January 6 Briefing, was engineered to be one-on-one by Comey. Check out his prepared statement on that. The reason to keep the group small was that the subject was the piss-dossier, and the big shots didn't want to subject Trump to embarassment by having more people around when the discussion/disclosure took place. Here is Comey in his own words ...
The IC leadership thought it important, for a variety of reasons, to alert the incoming President to the existence of this material, even though it was salacious and unverified. Among those reasons were: (1) we knew the media was about to publicly report the material and we believed the IC should not keep knowledge of the material and its imminent release from the President-Elect; and (2) to the extent there was some effort to compromise an incoming President, we could blunt any such effort with a defensive briefing.

The Director of National Intelligence asked that I personally do this portion of the briefing because I was staying in my position and because the material implicated the FBI's counter-intelligence responsibilities. We also agreed I would do it alone to minimize potential embarrassment to the President-Elect.

And today, Comey conveniently side stepped the question "The nature of that person?" What the heck? He makes a statement about his impression of "the nature of Trump" and nobody presses him to expand on WTF that means, in his mind.
90 posted on 06/08/2017 1:08:43 PM PDT by Cboldt
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To: Fantasywriter
-- He's a conniving guy, for sure. --

Richard Cohen: James Comey a bad choice for FBI - WaPo OPINION piece - July 1, 2013

Comey, too, is a hard-charger. The Wall Street Journal's editorial page compiled an impressive list of Comey's prosecutorial excesses, including the prosecution of two lobbyists for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee under the 1917 Espionage Act. The case was finally dropped, but not before both men lost their jobs, a whole lot of money and, I would suspect, a whole lot of sleep. ...

Comey has exercised his power in disturbing ways. Just as Obama overlooked Eric Holder's role in the 2001 Marc Rich pardon, the president is now overlooking the warning signs in Comey's record -- ticks of a disturbing zealotry.

The OpEd goes on to say Comey is not a bad man. I disagree. Comey is a bad man. He will stab you in the back, he is a liar, he is (as you say) conniving, and he is duplicitous.
91 posted on 06/08/2017 1:16:33 PM PDT by Cboldt
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To: Meet the New Boss

Apparently Comey borders on insane or he’s having a nervous breakdown.


92 posted on 06/08/2017 1:16:57 PM PDT by The Westerner (Protect the most vulnerable: get the government out of medicine and education!)
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To: Cboldt

Thank you for posting this.

President Trump obviously had them pegged from all of this. Comey asked to meet alone with him over something that was obviously fake. So the president kept up the ruse and met alone with him again later. Lol. Oh the tangled web . . .

This is all very very bad.


93 posted on 06/08/2017 1:17:22 PM PDT by petitfour (Appeal to Heaven)
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To: Cboldt

His mother in law was the head of Planned Parenthood of Bloomington, Indiana, according to her obituary. But I haven’t looked beyond a few pages of search results. He clerked for Thurgood Marshall according to one thing I found. But maybe that was a different DC Richman.


94 posted on 06/08/2017 1:20:37 PM PDT by petitfour (Appeal to Heaven)
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To: Cboldt
"Comey is a bad man."

He's a VERY bad man ...


95 posted on 06/08/2017 1:20:42 PM PDT by BlueLancer (Ex Scientia Tridens)
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To: Cboldt

Bump....Thank You!


96 posted on 06/08/2017 1:21:47 PM PDT by Chgogal (I will NOT submit, therefore, Jihadists hate me.)
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To: Cboldt

That is a very interesting excerpt. I’ve seen people asking how Comey knew the media was about to report on the memo. Didn’t McCain give it to the FBI directly? When and how did the Trump-hating media get a copy???

Unfortunately, Comey did elsewhere clarify what he meant about Trump’s nature. He called Trump a liar. If we had a senator worth squat they’d have demanded examples. The Democrats never let their honchos get smeared without a fight. But our Senators are Uniparty minions. They probably applaud inwardly whenever Trump gets dissed.

Well you know elsewhere today Comey


97 posted on 06/08/2017 1:22:43 PM PDT by Fantasywriter (Any attempt to do forensic work using Inernet artifacts is fraught with pitfalls. JoeProbono)
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To: Cboldt

It did not occur to Comey, before, during or after his chat with the President of the United States that their conversation was recorded!?

I hope this is a lie, because if not, the inheritor of J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI is either dementing or shockingly inept.


98 posted on 06/08/2017 1:24:53 PM PDT by The Westerner (Protect the most vulnerable: get the government out of medicine and education!)
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To: Fantasywriter

According to Trump’s lawyer, Comey admitted one of the documents was classified.

“..one of which he testified was classified”

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3559170/posts


99 posted on 06/08/2017 1:30:07 PM PDT by kanawa (Trump Loves a Great Deal)
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To: Fantasywriter
-- Unfortunately, Comey did elsewhere clarify what he meant about Trump's nature. He called Trump a liar. --

Indirectly. He was defending his version of events as truthful.

HEINRICH: Fair enough -- told the (ph) reporter he did -- never did that. You've testified that the president asked for your loyalty in that dinner. The White House denies that. A lot of this comes down to, who should we believe? Do you want to say anything as to why we should believe you?

COMEY: Probably (ph) -- my mother raised me not to say things like this about myself, so not I'm going to. I think people should look at the whole body of my testimony, because, as I used to say to juries, and when I talked about a witness, you can't cherry-pick it. You can't say, "I like these things he said, but on this, he's a -- he's a dirty, rotten liar."

HEINRICH: Right.

COMEY: You got to take it all together. And I've tried to be open and fair and transparent and accurate. A really significant fact to me is, so why did he kick everybody out of the Oval Office?

Why would you kick the attorney general, the president (ph), the chief of staff out, to talk to me, if it was about something else? And so that -- that, to me, is -- as an investigator, is a very significant fact.

HEINRICH: And as we look at -- at testimony, or as -- communication from both of you, we should probably be looking for consistency.

COMEY: Well, in looking at any witness, you look at consistency, track record, demeanor, record over time, that sort of thing.

The word "liar" in there is a quote that Comey attributes to his mother.

I do agree though, that Comey is suggesting that taking the totality of remarks, his compared with Trump's, Comey is the truthful one, and Trump is not. But he never made a direct statement that he might be mistaken on the point of Trump asking for loyalty. Comey says he was asked for loyalty. Trump says he never asked Comey for loyalty.

I don't find that on its own, asking for loyalty has any real significance. Meaning I don't care who is telling the truth on this, for the "truth of the matter."

Looking at the exchange the way Comey put is, taking him at his word, Comey is one weird dude. Why would he immediately jump to the conclusion that he was being asked to take an oath to the code of Omerta or something like that? By his own testimony, Comey never liked or trusted Trump. The two of them would have had a poison working relationship. If he could have, Comey would have fired Trump.

100 posted on 06/08/2017 1:36:44 PM PDT by Cboldt
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