Admitting to leaking private memos of conversations with President Donald Trump to the press, 56-year-old former FBI Director James Comey showed he has zero credibility. As 72-year-old former FBI Director Director now Special Counsel Robert Mueller drills down on the Russian investigation, he’s got to look at Comey’s deliberate leaks to the press. Once fired by Trump May 9, Comey’s looked to retaliate against Trump, something so inappropriate, so off-the-wall, it gives a clear picture why he was fired. Mueller’s job must go beyond the Russian investigation to examine carefully Comey’s logic handling former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s email investigation and, beyond that, how he determined probable cause to investigate Trump campaign officials. When Mueller looks at the facts, he’ll have to end the investigation into Trump’s alleged collusion with the Kremlin.
New reports of 50% of Comey’s personal memos about Trump containing classified or Top Secret information is the tip of the iceberg into what went wrong with the Russia investigation. Starting last July, Comey received from Sen. John McCain (R-Az.) a copy of Hillary’s paid opposition research into Trump packaged by former MI6 agent Christopher Steele. Steele’s dossier provided Comey with specious evidence to justify seeking warrants in the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court. Using bogus evidence, Comey duped the FISA Court to issue warrants to investigate key Trump campaign adisors, including former National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. Working closely with former Atty. Gen. Loretta Lynch, a key Hillary backer, Comey justified investigating Trump campaign officials. It’s only recently come out that Trump’s been under FBI surveillance since July 2016.
Deciding last July 5. 2016 to end the Hillary email investigation, Comey didn’t admit why he ended the investigation, only saying he couldn’t determine Hillary’s intent to divulge classified material. That decision of intent was not Comey’s call yet he, according to Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein, usurped the Department of Justice, warranting his termination by Trump. Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee June 8, one month after his firing, that he could no longer trust Atty. Gen. Loretta Lynch because of her June 28, 2016 meeting with former President Bill Clinton at Phoenix’s Sky Harbor Airport. Comey justified taking the Hillary email investigation into his own hands because the system was broken. Yet the real reason for ending the Hillary email investigation was kept secret by Comey: He didn’t disclose to the Senate Intel Committee he used a bogus Russian intel report to make his decision.
Mueller needs to get to the bottom of Comey’s twisted reasoning behind (a) ending the Hillary investigation and (b) justifying FISA court warrants on Trump campaign officials. “James Comey leaked CLASSIFIED INFORMATION to the media,” Trump tweeted Monday. “That is so illegal!.” Comey admitted to the Senate Intel Committee June 8 that the memo leaked to his friend did was not classified or Top Secret. Yet Comey admitted he leaked information about Trump is astonishing on its own. Whether the leaked email was confidential or not, former FBI Directors are not supposed to be the sources of leaked information. Deliberately leaking information about Trump, classified or not, raises eyebrows, directly harming Comey’s credibility. When Mueller gets around to evaluating Comey, he’ll have to take into account his use of bogus Russian intel and Hillary’s paid opposition research.
Comey ended the Hillary investigation July 5, 2016 not because he determined intent but to spare him any embarrassment for using a bogus Russian intel document. Comey didn’t want the press scrutinizing his intel sources, certainly not admitting he was duped by the Russians. Comey told the Senate Intel Committee June 8 that he thought Trump’s conversations about Flynn were inappropriate enough to warrant making special memos. “I remember thinking . . .’This is a very disturbing development, really important to our work,’” Comey told the Committee. “I needed to document it and preserve it in a way . . . that doesn’t include anything of classification, that would make it easier for use to discuss within the FBI and the government.” If Comey thought Trump tried to obstruct justice, he would have reported it his executive team or passed the information on to Congress.
Comey tried his best June 8 to imply Trump engaged in obstruction of justice when he mentioned something about letting go of the Flynn investigation. Comey mentioned nothing about the bogus Russian intel doc that convinced him former Atty Gen. Loretta Lynch couldn’t be trusted to prosecute Hillary. When Comey learned investigating Hillary that she “hammered” into oblivion 13 cell-phones to prevent investigators from evaluating private emails, he should have filed charges for obstruction of justice. Whether Comey violated classified rules with his memos is anyone’s guess. What’s certain is that he leaked private conversations with Trump to the press, essentially accusing Trump of obstruction of justice. “A leak is not a conversation,” said Fordham law professor Jed Shugerman. Whether it was privileged communication or not, Comey leaked to retaliate against Trump.
