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.”
Mueller’s Flynn Memo Disappoints Resisters: No Jail Time or Hints of Collusion
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s memo on former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn left members of the so-called “resistance” disappointed that the retired three star Army general would likely not face any jail time, and no collusion was detailed.
Leading up to its release, resisters were giddy over the idea the man who led a “Lock her up!” chant on the campaign trail would find himself behind bars. Mueller’s memo instead praised him for his substantial cooperation and “exemplary” service in uniform, leaving some angry.
Many Democrats took to Twitter to convey their unfulfilled vengeance towards Flynn, who was once appointed by former President Barack Obama to lead the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Ultimately, the resistance — who had built Flynn up to be a pivotal figure in the Russian collusion scheme and the Deep State’s first scalp of the Trump administration — was left with yet another Trump adviser whose crimes were not related to collusion, but to lying to investigators.
It is also not clear whether Flynn truly lied to investigators – the crime he pleaded guilty to. Both former FBI Director James Comey and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe told House Intelligence Committee investigators that they believed Flynn had not lied to the FBI when he was interviewed by two agents on January 24, 2017, according to the committee’s final report.
Flynn also had an incentive to plead guilty to lying: Mueller had also reportedly threatened to prosecute his son, Michael Flynn Jr., and Flynn’s siblings talked openly about how fighting the allegations against him were leading him to financial ruin.
Flynn’s brother, Joe Flynn, sent out a series of tweets on Tuesday after Mueller’s memo was released that suggested Flynn did not do anything wrong:
Some resisters tried to argue that Flynn’s individual lobbying work for Turkey during the time he was a campaign adviser was bad enough.
“The Flynn memo makes clear that the Trump campaign had a National Security Adviser who WAS ON THE PAYROLL OF A FOREIGN GOVERNMENT. At the same time Trump was pursuing a financial deal in Russia without disclosing it. How many countries were pulling strings behind the scenes?!?” tweeted former FBI special agent Asha Rappanga on Tuesday.
And some resisters are still holding out faith that Flynn knows something damaging to Trump. They note that the memo shows that Flynn has cooperated with three investigations: the special counsel investigation, an ongoing criminal investigation, and another ongoing investigation that is likely counterintelligence, not criminal.
The ongoing investigations are not yet known, since portions of the memo discussing them were redacted. Resisters are pointing to those portions as evidence that something big is in the works.
However, legal experts and some journalists say no one knows exactly what those investigations could be, but they are likely not related to collusion. Yahoo chief investigative correspondent Michael Isikoff told CNN’s Chris Cuomo Tuesday:
There are three investigations referenced for which Flynn has provided cooperation. One is completely redacted. We don’t know what it is. … The second is the special counsel investigation into collusion, links between the Trump campaign and the Russians — that is not redacted. And then there’s a third one, again, totally redacted.
So, the way I read this, the ongoing investigations which are not itemized here, are what Flynn is providing continuing assistance to, but it’s not the Russian coordination investigation, because that is spelled out and not redacted.
Jim Schultz, former White House lawyer and special assistant to President Trump, also told Cuomo Wednesday that Flynn not being charged with conspiracy “is telling.”
“If there was a there there, as it related to him, and others, it would have been likely he would have been charged with conspiracy as well, thereby implicating others as part of that conspiracy. You didn’t see that here, and I think that’s fairly significant,” he said.
House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-NC) said the fact there is no collusion suggested good news for Trump, since Flynn served on the campaign and the transition — the period that Mueller is investigating for collusion.
“Let’s look at what’s not in [the report],” Meadows said Tuesday evening on Fox News Channel’s Hannity. “There is no suggestion that Michael Flynn had anything to do with collusion. He was with the transition team. He was part of the campaign. And yet there is no mention of collusion,” he said.
“I think it’s good news for President Trump tonight, that this is what it’s come down to. Even though they said he substantially cooperated, I think he substantially cooperated to say that there was no collusion, and we can look at it with that in mind,” he added.
Legal experts also point out that if Mueller wants to make a conspiracy charge against Trump, he would likely make a deal with his associates to get them to plead guilty to being part of the conspiracy, to establish that it exists.
Yet, so far, Flynn, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, and former advisers George Papadopoulos and Paul Manafort were all charged with lying to investigators and financial-related crimes — which would harm their credibility and any claims that a conspiracy existed.
Andrew McCarthy, former federal prosecutor and senior fellow at the National Review Institute, wrote last week that Mueller’s goal is not to build a criminal case, but a report that will suggest — but not prove — collusion.
“No prosecutor builds a case the way Mueller is going about it,” McCarthy wrote. “What prosecutor says, ‘Here’s our witness line-up: Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos, Alex van der Zwaan, Rick Gates, Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen. And what is it that they have in common, ladies and gentlemen of the jury? Bingo! They’re all convicted liars’?”
“The report will detail disturbing — and thus politically damaging — connections between Trump associates and Kremlin cronies. But there will be no collusion crime, and thus no charges and no need for witnesses,” he wrote.
“The false-statements pleas create the illusion of a collusion crime, and thus appear to vindicate Mueller’s sprawling investigation,” he added.
Also notably missing from the memo is any mention of illegality in how the FBI came to investigate Flynn in the first place.
Someone privy to classified information had first illegally leaked the contents of Flynn’s call with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak on December 26, 2016, to the Washington Post‘s David Ignatius, which he wrote about on January 12, 2017, suggesting a potential violation of an arcane law known as the Logan Act, which prohibits private citizens from engaging in foreign diplomacy.
FBI investigators — who were already secretly investigating the Trump campaign — then used the article as a justification to interview Flynn on January 24, 2017. When public statements made by Vice President Mike Pence purportedly did not match with what Flynn had either told investigators or said to Kisylak, Flynn was fired for lying to Pence, and later, charged by Mueller for lying to investigators.
Prosecutors would later claim that Trump’s alleged comment to Comey that he hoped he would letting the investigation into Flynn “go” would be the basis for Mueller’s investigation into whether the president tried to obstruct the investigation into Flynn.
On Wednesday, Ignatius, the journalist who publicized the illegal leak that gave the FBI justification to investigate Flynn, wrote a column that seemed to oddly distance himself from the role he played in Flynn’s investigation.
Ignatius wrote about his own column:
A buried paragraph in an op-ed column started Flynn’s cascade of problems: He lied about his contacts with Kislyak in an FBI interview on Jan. 24, 2017, and was fired as national security adviser, charged with lying by Mueller and pleaded guilty. The odd part was that the seeming trigger for these big consequences was the relatively small matter of the Logan Act, an 18th-century heirloom that has never been enforced with criminal prosecution in modern times. I guess it’s one more example of the abiding lesson of political scandals that it’s not the initial activity that gets people in real trouble, but the attempt to cover it up.
While Ignatius wrote that it was “odd” that the Logan Act was the “seeming trigger” for the investigation of Flynn, he himself had questioned whether Flynn had violated the law in his original January 12, 2017, column:
The Logan Act (though never enforced) bars U.S. citizens from correspondence intending to influence a foreign government about “disputes” with the United States. Was its spirit violated? The Trump campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
A Republican congressional staffer scoffed at his seeming confusion.
“Ignatius feigns bewilderment at how the ‘relatively small matter’ of the archaic Logan Act resulted in Flynn’s prosecution. That’s the point — Flynn’s enemies in the deep state and the media initiated the whole attack on him by portraying his innocuous call with Kislyak as an abominable violation of the Logan Act,” the staffer said.
“It’s a ridiculous accusation, but the media hyped it shamelessly. It’s hard to believe Ignatius doesn’t understand that, since he and his leakers were the ones who started the attack,” the staffer said.
Former FBI Director James Comey said on Thursday that Republicans have subpoenaed him to appear before a closed-door meeting of the House Judiciary Committee early next month.
In a Thanksgiving Day tweet, Comey said he would be happy to answer the House Judiciary Committee’s questions, but will “resist a ‘closed door’’ for fear that his testimony will be leaked and distorted.
“Got a subpoena from House Republicans. I’m still happy to sit in the light and answer all questions,” Comey tweeted. “But I will resist a ‘closed door’ thing because I’ve seen enough of their selective leaking and distortion. Let’s have a hearing and invite everyone to see.”
Happy Thanksgiving. Got a subpoena from House Republicans. I’m still happy to sit in the light and answer all questions. But I will resist a “closed door” thing because I’ve seen enough of their selective leaking and distortion.Let’s have a hearing and invite everyone to see.
The subpoena calls Comey to testify as part of the congressional inquiry into allegations of anti-Trump bias that led to the shutting down of the probe of Hillary Clinton’s private email server and the opening of the investigation into purported ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.
President calls the Mueller investigation a ‘total mess’ and ‘disgrace’ on social media; John Roberts reports from the White House.
Comey’s tweet partly confirms a story published in Politicothat reported that the former FBI director and former President Barack Obama’s attorney general, Loretta Lynch, had both been subpoenaed.
A source told Fox News that Lynch and Comey had indeed been subpoenaed. So far Lynch has not made any public statement on the subpoena.
The office of Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., the outgoing chair of the House Judiciary Committee, was also unavailable for comment.
Comey has been the target of attacks by both Trump and Republicans for his time at the head of the FBI, with the president labelling the investigation into allegations of collusion between his campaign and Russia – now headed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller – a “witch hunt.”
Democrats, however, argue that the GOP-led investigation in the House is itself a partisan move to undermine Mueller’s investigation and have promised to renew investigations of their own into Trump’s attacks on the FBI and Justice Department when they take the House majority in January.
In a statement sent to Fox News, Comey’s lawyer, David Kelley, said: “Mr. Comey embraces and welcomes a hearing open to the public, but the subpoena issued yesterday represents an abuse of process, a divergence from House rules and its presumption of transparency. Accordingly, Mr. Comey will resist in Court this abuse of process.”
The news of the subpoenas comes on the heels of a busy week in the Mueller investigation that saw Trump provide the special counsel with written answers to questions about his knowledge of Russian interference in the 2016 election, his lawyers said Tuesday, avoiding at least for now a potentially risky sit-down with prosecutors.
The compromise outcome, nearly a year in the making, offers some benefit to both sides. Trump at least temporarily averts the threat of an in-person interview, which his lawyers have long resisted, while Mueller secures on-the-record statements whose accuracy the president will be expected to stand by for the duration of the investigation.
The responses may also help stave off a potential subpoena fight over Trump’s testimony if Mueller deems them satisfactory. They represent the first time the president is known to have described to investigators his knowledge of key moments under scrutiny by prosecutors.
Also this week, it was revealed by the New York Times that Trump told his counsel’s office last spring that he wanted to prosecute Clinton and former FBI Comey, an idea that prompted White House lawyers to prepare a memo warning of consequences ranging up to possible impeachment.
Then-counsel Don McGahn told the president he had no authority to order such a prosecution, and he had White House lawyers prepare the memo arguing against such a move, The Associated Press confirmed with a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to discuss the situation. McGahn said that Trump could request such a probe but that even asking could lead to accusations of abuse of power, the newspaper said.
No one with half a brain would say these people are damn crooks.
The Mueller witch hunt is effectively over — not because Mr. Mueller had not planned to drag this out until he could concoct a crime against Mr. Trump or a member of his family but rather because the jig is up.
Have you noticed how long it has been since anyone even suggested that the president sit down with the “special counsel” for an interview?
Mueller’s raison d’etre was the outrageous and purposely propagandized prevarication that the Trump campaign and even Mr. Trump himself “colluded” with Russia to rig the 2016 presidential election against Hillary Clinton.
The Democrats who perpetrated this fraud are not only masters of projection and deception, but they took their playbook of personal destruction to a whole new level.
There is more evidence by the day that the Clinton cabal, in and outside of government, weaponized our most venerable law enforcement institutions and agencies, abused protected government data, unmasked citizens and lied to our courts to destroy the political opposition.
Enough evidence has been forcibly extracted from various sources to establish that the actual crimes — conspiracy, fraud, obstruction of justice, espionage act violations and no doubt others — were committed by Clinton and her campaign with the calculated help of their power-crazed cronies within the FBI, CIA, NSA, Obama White House, the Department of Justice, the State Department, FusionGPS and probably even partners in the law firm of Perkins Coie who helped craft the “mosaic” of lies.
Heaven knows that is not what Mueller and his Clinton-loving cabal of prosecutors wanted to find — and they clearly avoided looking for it.
President Trump holds all the cards now.
The White House has seen enough of the actual documents to know the real conspirators were willing to destroy the Constitution and innocent lives to elect Hillary Clinton, protect Barack Obama, and destroy Donald Trump. As Congressman John Ratcliffe explained to Maria Bartiromo, these documents were classified only to protect the wrongdoers—not national security.
Indeed, each time documents have been unredacted, we’ve seen even more evidence of egregious wrongdoing.
While many are thrilled that the president—and no doubt Robert Mueller–know the truth, there is even more at stake here than exoneration of the president.
Americans have witnessed the annihilation of our most important law enforcement institutions. It is simply not enough for the president to know the truth and for Mueller’s witch hunt to end.
For the country to recover from this previously unfathomable cover-up of Clinton’s crimes and the criminalization of our election process and justice system, every individual whose fingerprints appear on any of these crimes must be publicly exposed and held to account.
The deliberate and subversive conduct of all involved were not only crimes against Mr. Trump — now the president. They were crimes against our Constitution, law enforcement institutions, federal courts, every American, and the Rule of Law writ large.
The president must declassify the following for the sake of the American people:
The names of the private contractors to whom FBI Director Comey gave unlawful access to raw FISA data in 2015 — if not before — as shown in the opinion of FISC Chief Judge Rosemary Collyer in April 2017.
All emails or texts among any government officials in any agency or the Obama White House that mention the Steele dossier, unmaskings of American citizens, or “Russia collusion” prior to your inauguration and thereafter until Mueller appointed Special Counsel.
All memos, FBI 302s, and emails indicating the targeting and interview of General Flynnonce he joined the Trump team and any recording — oral, reported or written — of the remarks of Andrew McCabe that mention Flynn or Donald Trump.
All the FISA applications, including the ones the court first denied, that were based in any part on the “Steele dossier” and the names of all persons in the FBI or DOJ who worked on those applications.
The classified section of the Inspector General’s report regarding the pre-election conduct and leaks by the FBI and DOJ.
The laptop of Anthony Weiner on which the New York FBI agents reported seeing the “entire Clinton email file” — 675,000 emails.
All documents demanded by Congress that have not yet been produced and on which the FBI and DOJ continue to stonewall.
The chips must fall as they may. No rational American can trust our institutions of government again until the Truth is outed and so is everyone whose fingerprints have touched any aspect of this calculated corruption of justice.
When Will Obama Be Questioned On His Corrupt Administration?
A former top lawyer at the FBI provided “explosive” testimony to Congress on Wednesday regarding the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation, lawmakers said.
James Baker, who served as the FBI’s general counsel until May, told Congress that a previously unidentified source provided information to the FBI for its investigation, which began on July 31, 2016.
“During the time that the FBI was putting — that [the Department of Justice] and FBI were putting together the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act surveillance warrant] during the time prior to the election — there was another source giving information directly to the FBI, which we found the source to be pretty explosive,” Ohio GOP Rep. Jim Jordan said after a hearing, according to Fox News.
As the FBI’s top attorney, Baker was directly involved in handling applications for the FISA warrants granted against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
Baker was interviewed behind closed doors as part of a congressional task force’s investigation into the FBI’s possible abuse of the FISA process. Republican lawmakers have expressed concerns that the Page FISAs relied heavily on the unverified Steele dossier.
The document, which was funded by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee, was cited extensively in the FBI’s applications to spy on Page.
“Some of the things that were shared were explosive in nature,” North Carolina GOP Rep. Mark Meadows told Fox regarding Baker’s interview. “This witness confirmed that things were done in an abnormal fashion. That’s extremely troubling.”
Jordan and Meadows did not provide additional details about what information Baker shared or who the FBI’s source was. They said that congressional investigators were not aware of the source until Baker’s testimony.
Meadows said earlier on Wednesday that he has seen evidence that “confidential human sources” used by the FBI “actually taped members within the Trump campaign.” (RELATED: Undercover FBI Sources Taped Trump Campaign)
“There is strong suggestions in that some of the text messages, emails, and so forth who was involved, that extraordinary measures were used to surveil,” Meadows told Hill.TV.
