'That Is So Illegal!': Trump Slams Comey For 'Leaking Classified Info To The Media'

Chris Menahan
InformationLiberation
Jul. 10, 2017

According to a new report from The Hill, over half of former FBI Director James Comey's private memos detailing his conversations with President Donald Trump "have been determined to contain classified information."

If the report is accurate, it means Comey may have leaked classified information to his friend Daniel Richman at Columbia University, who in turn leaked the content of the memos to the media. Remember, Comey said specifically he leaked his private memos to get a special counsel appointed to investigate Trump.

From The Hill:
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.

This revelation raises the possibility that Comey broke his own agency’s rules and ignored the same security protocol that he publicly criticized Hillary Clinton for in the waning days of the 2016 presidential election.

Comey testified last month he considered the memos to be personal documents and that he shared at least one of them with a Columbia University lawyer friend. He asked that lawyer to leak information from one memo to the news media in hopes of increasing pressure to get a special prosecutor named in the Russia case after Comey was fired as FBI director.

“So you didn’t consider your memo or your sense of that conversation to be a government document?,” Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) asked Comey on June 8. “You considered it to be, somehow, your own personal document that you could share to the media as you wanted through a friend?”

“Correct,” Comey answered. “I understood this to be my recollection recorded of my conversation with the president. As a private citizen, I thought it important to get it out.”

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.

“I immediately prepared an unclassified memo of the conversation about Flynn and discussed the matter with FBI senior leadership,” he testified about the one memo he later leaked about former national security adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.

He added, “My view was that the content of those unclassified, memorialization of those conversations was my recollection recorded.”

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.

While the Comey memos have been previously reported, this is the first time there has been a number connected to the amount of the memos the ex-FBI chief wrote.

Four of the memos had markings making clear they contained information classified at the “secret” or “confidential” level, according to officials directly familiar with the matter.
Trump responded to the report this morning, retweeting this short piece from Fox and Friends:


He then commented himself, saying what Comey did is "so illegal!"


"James Comey leaked CLASSIFIED INFORMATION to the media," he wrote on twitter. "That is so illegal!"

Indeed it likely is and professor Richman is also implicated in the crime.

Trump also retweeted this clip from Fox and Friends where former congressmen Jason Chaffetz said Comey went "silent" after being asked where his memos were:


Read The Hill's full report.

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