http://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/08/full-text-james-comey-trump-russia-testimony-239295
WARNER: I think that’s a very important statement you just made. Then, unlike your dealings with presidents of either parties in your past experience, in every subsequent meeting or conversation with this president, you created a written record. Did you feel that you needed to create this written record of these memos, because they might need to be relied on at some future date?
COMEY: Sure. I created records after conversations that I think I did it after each of our nine conversations. If I didn’t, I did it for nearly all of them especially the ones that were substantive. I knew there might come a day when I would need a record of what had happened, not just to defend myself, but to defend the FBI and our integrity as an institution and the Independence of our investigative function. That’s what made this so difficult is it was a combination of circumstances, subject matter and the particular person. [Corrected - my version: That’s why I gave the only copy of the record to someone else and then deleted the file, so I could better defend the FBI by not having that record.]
So Comey in his testimony said, “I knew there might come a day when I would need a record of what had happened, not just to defend myself, but to defend the FBI and our integrity as an institution and the Independence of our investigative function.”
To me, this is an admission that his memos were a work product, and thus, Comey would’ve needed to get permission to show those memos to anyone outside the agency or the White House. Therefore, leaking the memos is against agency rules. How does one intend to defend the integrity of the FBI as an institution if one decides to break the agency’s own rules? Nice try, Comey.