Friday, April 27, 2018

Is Comey telling the truth about his memos?

"Mr. Comey gave four total memos to his friend Daniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor who is now a professor at Columbia Law School, people familiar with the matter said," the Journal reported on April 20.

During a town hall appearance on CNN , Comey suggested there was just one memo involved, and that he did not leak anything.

"You did leak memos," CNN's Anderson Cooper said to Comey.

The memo to which Comey referred was apparently the one he wrote after a Feb. 14, 2017, conversation with Trump in which the president expressed hope that Comey would drop the FBI's investigation into fired national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Comey also argued that giving the memo to Richman was not a leak because, "I was a private citizen - I was not an FBI employee at that time." FBI officials are not allowed to disclose confidential information, classified or not, simply because they leave the FBI. But what about the one-memo-versus-four-memos question? On CNN, Comey explained that he gave one memo to Richman to leak.

So Comey gave Richman four memos, but only one at first, and then the other three later, and then as part of his "Legal team." And none were leaked, although Comey authorized Richman to "Communicate the substance" of one memo, although not the memo itself, to the press, although the memo ended up being quoted in the resulting news story.

On another occasion, Comey told Baier that he never considered his memos as part of an FBI file, or FBI work product.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/byron-york-is-comey-telling-the-truth-about-his-memos 

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