Former FBI Director James Comey revealed in closed-door testimony with House Republicans on Friday that he deliberately concealed an explosive memorandum about his one-on-one Oval Office meeting with President Trump in February 2017 from top Department of Justice officials.
The former FBI head also acknowledged that when the agency initiated its counterintelligence probe into possible collusion between Trump campaign officials and the Russian government in July 2016, investigators “didn’t know whether we had anything” and that “in fact, when I was fired as director [in May 2017], I still didn’t know whether there was anything to it.”
His remarks square with testimony this summer from former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, whose anti-Trump texts became a focus of House GOP oversight efforts. Page told Congress in a closed-door deposition that “even as far as May 2017” — more than nine months after the counterintelligence probe commenced — “we still couldn’t answer the question” as to whether Trump staff had improperly colluded with Russia.
Comey further testified on Friday that he and his aides were “all very concerned” about how the president had spoken of the probe into fired National Security Adviser Michael Flynn in a private Oval Office meeting, according to a 235-page transcript of his remarks released as a part of an agreement between House Republicans and Comey.
Former FBI Director James Comey testifies in closed-door interview on the Hill; chief intelligence correspondent Catherine Herridge reports.
The fired FBI director wrote in his memorandum that Trump had told him, “I hope you can let this go,” amid reports that Flynn had lied to the FBI and senior White House officials about his contacts with Russia’s government.
But despite that concern, Comey told Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, that he and his team made a “judgment call” not to tell then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions or his lieutenants about Trump’s comments, saying he thought Sessions would recuse himself “in a matter of days” from the Russia probe.
“We agreed that we ought to hold it very close, not brief the investigative team at this point and not go over and talk to the leadership of the Department of Justice, to hold onto it until we got a new deputy attorney general and they sorted out how they were going to supervise the Russia investigation,” Comey said.
Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, at center, pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI as part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. (AP)
Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who was later fired for leaking a self-serving story to the press and lying about it to Comey and federal investigators, was among the brain trust Comey sat down with to discuss his options. The two were joined, Comey said, by then-FBI General Counsel James Baker and Comey’s chief of staff, James Rybicki.
Comey told lawmakers that others may have been present as well, including FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich (who was an associate deputy director at the time), National Security Branch Executive Director Carl Ghattas, and FBI counterintelligence head Bill Priestap, who recently announced he would leave the agency by year-end. Comey said that he did not believe anti-Trump FBI Agent Peter Strzok or former FBI lawyer Lisa Page were in the room.
Comey testified: “We believed that the Attorney General, Mr. Sessions, was on the cusp of recusing himself from anything related to Russia, so it didn’t make any sense to brief him on it, and that there was no deputy attorney general at that point.” (Sally Yates, a holdover from the Obama administration, was terminated by Trump in late January 2017 after she refused to defend the administration’s ban on travel from several Muslim-majority nations in court.)
“We agreed that we ought to hold it very close.”
— Former FBI Director James Comey
Sessions recused himself from Russia-related matters shortly afterward, in early March 2017 — a decision that Trump has since called a “terrible mistake,” although it was recommended by career Justice Department officials in part because Sessions had met with Russian dignitaries while assisting with the Trump campaign. But Jordan pressed Comey on why he decided not to tell the next-in-command at the DOJ.
Lawmakers release transcript of testimony from former FBI Director James Comey; reaction from Rep. Jim Jordan, Republican member of the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees.
“I don’t know who was No. 3 at that point,” Comey responded. “There was an acting — there was a U.S. Attorney acting as the deputy attorney general, who we knew would be in the seat only until Rod Rosenstein was confirmed,” he added, in an apparent reference to former Acting Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente, who served until Rosenstein took the job in April 2017.
Comey continued that “it made sense to hold onto it” because “we saw no investigative urgency.”
But unredacted sections of Comey’s other memoranda documenting his conversations with Trump apparently demonstrate that he later did inform Boente and other top DOJ officials about other sensitive matters concerning his conversations with the president.
In a memorandum documenting his phone conversation with Trump on March 30, 2017, about how to “lift the cloud” of the Russia investigation from the White House, Comey wrote, “I called the acting attorney general and relayed the substance of the above and said I was telling him so he could decide what guidance to give me, if any.”
In a call from the White House that day, Comey wrote that Trump had asked him “several times” to “find a way to get out” to the public that he was not actively under investigation as part of the ongoing federal probe into possible Russia collusion with his team. Comey assured Trump, and congressional leaders, that the president was not being investigated at the time.
Former FBI Director James Comey, with his attorney, David Kelley, right, speaks to reporters after a day of testimony before the House Judiciary and Oversight committees, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, Dec. 7, 2018. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) (Associated Press)
House Republicans are set to have another opportunity to question Comey before they lose majority status when the new Congress is seated in January. The fired FBI director told reporters his return visit for more testimony will likely come the “week after next.”
Comey largely frustrated GOP lawmakers during Friday’s session, in large part because his lawyers urged him not to answer numerous questions. On Twitter after his testimony, Comey sharply criticized what he characterized as Republicans’ “desperate attempt to find anything that can be used to attack the institutions of justice investigating this president.”
But while Comey insisted in the interview that “we never investigated the Trump campaign for political purposes,” the transcript shows he claimed ignorance or memory lapses in response to questions concerning key details and events in the Russia investigation, which some GOP lawmakers continue to claim was improperly conducted.
The transcript reveals lawmakers’ frustration with his lack of specifics. Asked if he recalled who drafted the FBI’s “initiation document” for the July 2016 Russia investigation, Comey said, “I do not.” He again claimed not to know when asked about the involvement in that initiation of Peter Strzok, whose anti-Trump texts later got him removed from the special counsel’s probe.
When asked if the FBI had any evidence that anyone in the Trump campaign conspired to hack the DNC server, Comey gave a lengthy answer referring to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation as to why he couldn’t answer.
Early Sunday, Trump slammed Comey’s testimony repeatedly on Twitter, deriding him as “Leakin’ James Comey.”
On 245occasions, former FBI Director James Comey told House investigators he didn’t know, didn’t recall, or couldn’t remember things when asked. Opened investigations on 4 Americans (not 2) – didn’t know who signed off and didn’t know Christopher Steele. All lies!
Leakin’ James Comey must have set a record for who lied the most to Congress in one day. His Friday testimony was so untruthful! This whole deal is a Rigged Fraud headed up by dishonest people who would do anything so that I could not become President. They are now exposed!
But there was a time when Comey, by his own accounting, didn’t think of himself as the kind of person who would leak information behind the president’s back.
In a Jan. 28, 2017, dinner with Trump in the White House’s Green Room, Comey wrote in a since-released memorandum that he told the president, “I don’t do sneaky things, I don’t leak, I don’t do weasel moves.“
James Comey Admits FBI Was Still Probing ‘Pee’ Dossier Until Day He Was Fired
At the time James B. Comey was fired as FBI director, his agency was still attempting to corroborate claims made in the infamous, largely-discredited anti-Trump dossier, Comey admitted.
In testimony to the House Judiciary Committee on Friday, Comey described an effort “to try to replicate, either rule in or rule out, as much of that collection of reports that’s commonly now called the Steele dossier as possible, and that that work was ongoing when I was fired.” Trump dismissed Comey from the FBI on May 9, 2017.
A transcript of Comey’s testimony was released on Saturday. During one exchange with lawmakers, Comey said that FBI efforts to probe the dossier given to the agency by former British spy Christopher Steele started “sometime in ’16” almost immediately after Steele provided the charges.
The timing is instructive. In previous testimony, Comey admitted that he pushed back against a January 2017 request from President Donald Trump to possibly investigate the origins of the claims made inside the Steele dossier.
Comey’s latest testimony shows that even while he was cautioning Trump against ordering a probe of the dossier claims, Comey’s own FBI was quietly conducting an ongoing investigation into the wild content of that very dossier.
During prepared remarks for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, delivered on June 8, 2017, Comey related how he pushed back against a suggestion from Trump to investigate the dossier claims.
The former FBI chief stated that following a January 6 Oval Office meeting with Intelligence Community leaders, Comey “remained alone with the President Elect to brief him on some personally sensitive aspects of the information assembled during the assessment.”’
It is clear Comey was referring to the dossier since he writes the “salacious and unverified” material was about to be publicly reported by the news media. Four days after that briefing, the dossier was published by BuzzFeed.
In his statement summarizing his conversation with Trump, Comey refers to Russian prostitutes, a key component of the dossier:
He said he had nothing to do with Russia, had not been involved with hookers in Russia, and had always assumed he was being recorded when in Russia.
In a private White House dinner with Trump on January 27, Comey says the topic of the “salacious material” again came up and he reveals that Trump was considering asking the FBI to investigate the origins of the claims. Comey pushed back against that idea.
Comey writes:
During the dinner, the President returned to the salacious material I had briefed him about on January 6, and, as he had done previously, expressed his disgust for the allegations and strongly denied them. He said he was considering ordering me to investigate the alleged incident to prove it didn’t happen. I replied that he should give that careful thought because it might create a narrative that we were investigating him personally, which we weren’t, and because it was very difficult to prove a negative. He said he would think about it and asked me to think about it.
The Steele dossier was reportedly funded by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) via the Perkins Coie law firm.
A House Intelligence Committee memo released last February documented that as FBI director, Comey signed three FISA applications to spy on former Trump adviser Carter Page with the dossier serving as part of the basis for the warrant requests.
Comey signed the applications without telling the FISA court that the dossier was financed by Trump’s primary political opponents, the memo related.
“Neither the initial application in October 2016, nor any of the renewals, disclose or reference the role of the DNC, Clinton campaign, or any party/campaign in funding Steele’s efforts, even though the political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior and FBI officials,” the memo states.
The GOP memo also relates that after Steele was terminated months earlier as an FBI source a “source validation report conducted by an independent unit within FBI assessed Steele’s reporting as only minimally corroborated.” Still, Comey saw fit, according to the Republican and Democrat memos, to utilize the dossier in the FISA documents. He also briefed Trump and then-President Barack Obama on the dossier contents.
Trump should have investigated Hillary and all the corrupt Democrats. Don’t play nice with demons is my motto.
0:55
Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” the likely next chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said President Donald Trump might “face the real prospect of jail time” in light of charges against his personal attorney, Michael Cohen for illegal payments during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Schiff said, “There’s a very real prospect that on the day Donald Trump leaves office, the Justice Department may indict him, that he may be the first president in quite some time to face the real prospect of jail time. We have been discussing the issue of pardons the president may offer to people or dangle in front of people. The bigger pardon question may come down the road, as the next president has to determine whether to pardon Donald Trump.”
This proves you can make jokes about Gay’s and stay in Hollywood.
Comedian and A-list actor Kevin Hart announced early Friday morning that he “made the choice to step down” from hosting the 91st Academy Awards amid a backlash over the resurfacing of previous gay jokes and tweets.
“I have made the choice to step down from hosting this year’s Oscar’s….this is because I do not want to be a distraction on a night that should be celebrated by so many amazing talented artists,” Kevin Hart tweeted. “I sincerely apologize to the LGBTQ community for my insensitive words from my past.”
I have made the choice to step down from hosting this year’s Oscar’s….this is because I do not want to be a distraction on a night that should be celebrated by so many amazing talented artists. I sincerely apologize to the LGBTQ community for my insensitive words from my past.
“I’m sorry that I hurt people.. I am evolving and want to continue to do so. My goal is to bring people together not tear us apart. Much love & appreciation to the Academy,” the Night School star added. “I hope we can meet again.”
I’m sorry that I hurt people.. I am evolving and want to continue to do so. My goal is to bring people together not tear us apart.Much love & appreciation to the Academy.I hope we can meet again.
Hart’s response to criticism over earlier tweets deemed homophobic by some on Thursday further inflamed a backlash to the comedian two days after he was named host of the upcoming Academy Awards.
On Thursday, Hart wrote on Instagram that critics should “stop being negative” after years-old tweets surfaced in which he used gay slurs. In an accompanying video, a shirtless Hart lounging in bed warily said he wasn’t going to “let the craziness frustrate me.”
“I’m almost 40 years old. If you don’t believe that people change, grow, evolve? I don’t know what to tell you,” said Hart, who added, in all-caps: “I love everybody.”
Hart has since deleted some of the anti-gay tweets, mostly dated from 2009-2011. But they had already been screen-captured and been shared online. In 2011, he wrote in a since-deleted tweet: “Yo if my son comes home & try’s 2 play with my daughters doll house I’m going 2 break it over his head & say n my voice ’stop that’s gay.”
Hart’s attitudes about homosexuality were also a well-known part of his stand-up act. In the 2010 special Seriously Funny, he said “one of my biggest fears is my son growing up and being gay.”
“Keep in mind, I’m not homophobic, I have nothing against gay people, do what you want to do, but me, being a heterosexual male, if I can prevent my son from being gay, I will,” Hart said.
GLAAD, the advocacy group for LGBTQ rights, said Thursday that it has reached out to Oscars broadcaster ABC, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts, and Sciences and Hart’s management to “discuss Kevin’s anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and record.”
Comedian and actor Billy Eichner was among those on social media who were disappointed with Hart’s response.
“This is not good. A simple, authentic apology showing any bit of understanding or remorse would have been so simple,” Eichner said. “Like I tweeted a few weeks ago, Hollywood still has a real problem with gay men. On the surface it may not look like it. Underneath, it’s far more complicated.”
This is not good. A simple, authentic apology showing any bit of understanding or remorse would have been so simple. Like I tweeted a few weeks ago, Hollywood still has a real problem with gay men. On the surface it may not look like it. Underneath, it’s far more complicated.
The film academy on Tuesday announced Hart as host to its February ceremony. Representatives for the academy and for ABC didn’t respond to messages Thursday.
He is right the Bob Mueller investigation is nothing but a destruction project to destroy Donald Trump. There is no such thing as justice in America for the rich and powerful.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich laid into special counsel Robert Mueller on Fox News’ “Hannity” on Wednesday night, labeling the Russia probe a “Trump destruction project.”
Gingrich’s observation came in response to the sentencing recommendation Mueller made earlier this week regarding President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.
“Mueller is not involved in a investigation,” Gingrich charged. “Mueller has a Trump destruction project. He brought on a team, all of them dedicated to destroying Trump. They have done everything they could to destroy Trump.”
Gingrich explained, “You basically threaten somebody and say, ‘I’m going to bankrupt you. I’m going to put your son in jail. I’m going to charge you with so many different crimes, you’ll never get out from under it. Now would you like to talk?’”
ABC News reported Flynn put his home in Alexandria, Virginia up for sale last spring to pay his mounting legal bills.
Additionally, a month before entering into a plea agreement with Mueller in December 2017, the retired general reportedly expressed concern about his son being prosecuted for failing to register in relation to consulting work the two did for foreign entities, according to Forbes.
“It has nothing to do with the truth. It has nothing to do with justice,” Gingrich alleged.
He predicted, “Historians one day will comment that this was one of the most extraordinary efforts to undo the will of the American people by an established bureaucracy, and its establishment friends, that we’ve seen in all of American history.”
Hannity then raised the issue of new reporting by The Hill’s John Solomon indicating that former FBI Director James Comey was in email exchanges with other top DOJ officials and FBI investigators, which provides “the most damning evidence to date of potential abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.”
“The email exchanges show the FBI was aware — before it secured the now-infamous warrant (to spy on Trump campaign advisor Carter Page) — that there were intelligence community concerns about the reliability of the main evidence used to support it: the Christopher Steele dossier,” wrote Solomon.
Gingrich responded, “You had the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation actively trying to destroy a presidential candidate.”
He argued that Comey and others who were involved in the efforts to undermine Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign, “operated on a premise … Hillary was going to win. So they never thought this would come to light. They thought they were helping the winner.”
Gingrich believes Mueller has taken up the banner and reiterated that the special counsel’s team is “actively trying to destroy the President of the United States.”
“And I know it’s frustrating but the fact is, this is a clear cut drama. They hate him, they want to destroy him, it has nothing to do with the truth and nothing to do with the law.”
Twitter is allowing dozens of pedophiles to use the social network and promote their pro-pedophile messages, focusing its time instead on banning conservatives and cracking down on “hate speech.”
In a series of posts, Saturday, one anonymous Twitter account documented the dozens of pedophiles openly using the social network. Breitbart Tech confirmed the listed accounts on Twitter.
Over 50 accounts which openly described themselves either as pedophiles or MAPs, an acronym for Minor-Attracted Persons, were listed — some of which have been active on Twitter since 2012.
One account, named Virtuous Pedophiles, described itself as an account for “pedophiles against adult-child sex,” while another user described himself as a “50ish year old anti-contact paedophile.”
This is the sick metrosexual CEO of twitter.
“howdy, i’m davey,” declared one user in his bio. “i’m attracted to boys 4+.”
“I’m out to around 15 ppl and all of them love me and no-one was aggressive or disrespectful,” claimed another self-proclaimed “anti-contact pedophile,” who used an image of a young boy as his profile picture. “My friends are even better friends now.”
A more recently-created account, which has made over 1,000 posts since its creation in October, posted, “MAPs have every right to talk (including, yes, on public blogs) about their fantasies, sexual and romantic, as long as sexually explicit material is hidden from children. It’s not bad or disrespectful to talk about people you think are cute.”
“I agree we have the right to do it. Whether we should or not is another matter,” replied an account claiming to be Todd Nickerson, the infamous “virtuous pedophile” who previously wrote several articles for Salon, including, “I’m a pedophile, but not a monster,” and “I’m a pedophile, you’re the monsters: My week inside the vile right-wing hate machine.”
Salon later deleted Nickerson’s articles, blaming them on “old management.”
Other accounts discovered included a user who has been on the platform for six years, and described himself as “sexually and emotionally attracted to children,” and a user which spoke about being attracted to her cousin.
“So recently I saw one of my cousins who has been in my AoA [Age of Attraction], but hasn’t really been my type,” the user expressed. “Turns out she just needed to change a little bit, because she was certainly my type when I saw her.”
Twitter’s pedophile problem has previously been reported on by news outlets, including the Daily Mail, the Sun, and Vice News, however many of the previously reported accounts remain on the social network, with Twitter deciding to take no action unless the accounts explicitly engage in “child sexual exploitation.”
In 2017, British MPs from both the Labour Party and the Conservative Party called on Twitter to take action against pedophiles on its social network — a call Twitter has decided to ignore, focusing instead on the blacklisting of conservatives and libertarians.
She needs to worry more about the Americans that she represents in California.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) promised over the weekend to pass the Dream Act in the new Congress, which would provide amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants.
Pelosi, who will likely become the next speaker of the House in January, said in a statement on Saturday that she will work to pass the Dream Act with her new House Democrat majority.
“America draws strength from our long, proud heritage as a nation of immigrants. In the Majority, Democrats will work to reverse the Republicans’ destructive anti-immigrant agenda,” Pelosi contended. “Our House Democratic Majority will once again pass the Dream Act to end the uncertainty and fear inflicted on patriotic young men and women across the country.”
Pelosi released the statement in response to a letter from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, which urged Pelosi to take up legislation in the first 100 days of the new term to protect Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) illegal aliens and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) refugees. The Hispanic Caucus stressed that any new legislation should include a “pathway to citizenship,” “an end to immigration laws that tear families apart,” an end to the “militarization of our borderlands,” and a “recommitment to our nation’s founding ideals as a place of refuge for those seeking protection at our borders.”
“Undocumented immigrants work hard, obey the laws, and pay taxes. They are our friends and neighbors. They are part of the American social fabric and deserve a pathway to the American dream,” the Hispanic group added in the letter.
Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY), one of the lawmakers who signed the letter to Pelosi, told CBS News that Democrats should move “expeditiously” in January to pass legislation to shield illegal immigrants and TPS refugees from deportation, without funding a wall on America’s southern border.
“I think the Dream Act should be taken on alone, with no poison pills attached to it,” Espaillat said.
President Donald J. Trump and congressional Republicans contended they could only consider some form of amnesty for illegal aliens if it were tied to wall funding as well as pro-American immigration reform such as E-Verify, ending chain migration, and ending the diversity lottery.
Espaillat said, “These young people are still in limbo. Had it not been for the courts, they would probably be underground. They would be in the shadows.”
Pelosi’s statement comes as President Trump has threatened to shut down the government in December over partially funding a wall along the U.S. southern border. Trump has demanded that Congress fund $5 billion of wall funding or he will partially shut down the government.
President Trump reiterated his threat of a government shutdown if Democrats do not give him wall funding in December.
“We would save Billions of Dollars if the Democrats would give us the votes to build the Wall,” Trump tweeted on Monday. “Either way, people will NOT be allowed into our Country illegally! We will close the entire Southern Border if necessary. Also, STOP THE DRUGS!”
Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump
We would save Billions of Dollars if the Democrats would give us the votes to build the Wall. Either way, people will NOT be allowed into our Country illegally! We will close the entire Southern Border if necessary. Also, STOP THE DRUGS!
