The Justice Department is comparing former FBI director James Comey’s unauthorized ‘memo leak’ to the New York Times to Wikileaks, says Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton.
The Justice Department believes some of the Comey memos contain classified material.
Judicial Watch reports:
Judicial Watch announced today that the Justice Department is now comparing former FBI Director James Comey to WikiLeaks. After Comey was fired by President Trump on May 9, 2017, he gave the New York Times a February 14, 2017, memorandum written about a one-on-one conversation he had with President Trump regarding former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.
[…]
Comey testified under oath before the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that he authored as many as nine such memos about his one-on-one conversations with President Trump. He also admitted, regarding the “Flynn” memo, “I asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter [for The New York Times] … I asked him to because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel.” The New York Times published a report about the memo on May 16, 2017.
[…]
In its court filing opposing the release, the Justice Department also asserts that some of the Comey memos contain classified material.
The Justice Department is effectively challenging Comey’s testimony, where under oath, the former FBI director claimed he did not leak any classified information (or “government documents”) to the media.
The report contradicts Comey’s testimony to Congress back in June, when the embattled swamp creature told Senator Blunt that his memos about President Trump weren’t ‘government documents.
Below is a transcript of the exchange between Sen. Blunt and Comey where the FBI director appears to have committed perjury:
BLUNT: “You said, after you were dismissed, you gave information to a friend so that friend could get that information into the public media.”
COMEY: “Correct.”
BLUNT: “What kind of information was that? Wasn’t that (ph) — what kind of information did you give to a friend?”
COMEY: “That the — the — the Flynn conversation, that the president asked me to let the — the Flynn — I’m forgetting my exact own words, but the — the conversation in the Oval Office.BLUNT: So you didn’t consider your memo or your sense of that conversation to be a government document? You consider it to be somehow your own personal document that you could share with the media as you wanted to?”
COMEY: “Correct. I…”
BLUNT: “Through a friend?”
COMEY: “… I understood this to be my recollection, recorded, of my conversation with the president. As a private citizen, I felt free to share that. I thought it very important to get it out.”
BLUNT: “So were all of your memos that you’ve recorded on classified or other documents memos that might be yours as a private citizen?”
COMEY: “I’m sorry, I’m not following the question.”
BLUNT: “Well, I think you said you’d used classified — a classified…”
(CROSSTALK)
COMEY: “Not the classified documents. Unclassified — I don’t have any of them anymore. I gave them to the special counsel. But, yeah, my view was that the content of those unclassified — the memorialization of those conversations was my recollection recorded.”
FLASHBACK: Comey testifies to Congress in June his Trump memos were unclassified, not a 'government document.' pic.twitter.com/UFAe7c74uq
— Josh Caplan (@joshdcaplan) July 10, 2017
More than half of the memos fired FBI Director James Comey wrote during his private conversations with President Trump have been determined to contain classified information.
In fact, more than half of Comey’s memos on President Trump were labeled “government documents.”
The Hill reports:
More than half of the memos former FBI chief James Comey wrote as personal recollections of his conversations with President Trump about the Russia investigation have been determined to contain classified information, according to interviews with officials familiar with the documents.
[…]
Comey insisted in his testimony he believed his personal memos were unclassified, though he hinted one or two documents he created might have been contained classified information.
But when the seven memos Comey wrote regarding his nine conversations with Trump about Russia earlier this year were shown to Congress in recent days, the FBI claimed all were, in fact, deemed to be government documents.
Following the Justice Department’s announcement on Comey’s unauthorized leak, Fitton had this to say: “How can this Justice Department defend its position that memos written for pernicious purposes to target a sitting president with a criminal investigation should remain secret? Mr. Mueller may have an interest in protecting Comey, but the public’s interest demands transparency about Comey’s vendetta against President Trump.”
