Former FBI Director Admitted He Was the Source Of At Least One Leak To the Press (theoutline.com)

Shortly after his dismissal as head of the FBI, James Comey authorized "a close friend" to leak the contents of his memos to the press in order to prompt a special counsel investigation, he said today. From a report: Former FBI Director James Comey testified that he asked a friend, a law professor at Columbia University, to leak details of his dinner with the President to The New York Times, including the claim that the President asked Comey to drop the investigation into former national security advisor Michael Flynn's contacts with Russian officials. Comey kept meticulous memos of all of his interactions with Trump, and he gave that memo to a friend to pass it along to the Times in order to spark a special investigation. "You considered this not a document of the government, but your own personal document that you could share with the media as you want to?" Senator Roy Blunt asked Comey. "Correct," Comey replied. "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." Edward Snowden tweeted, "It seems the [former] FBI Director agrees: sometimes the only moral decision is to break the rules."

Comments

Re:Thanks!

[MightyMartian]

There's nothing in the public testimony likely strong enough to urge the Republicans in the direction of impeachment. Even for the Dems, only a couple of no-name firebrands in the House think impeachment is even remotely possible at this point. Some Dems would in fact argue the very best thing for them going into the 2018 mid-terms is to keep Trump in the White House, where he seems to have made a high art of shooting himself and his party in the foot.

So far as I can tell, the "experts" (whomever they may be) seem to be leaning away from Comey's evidence being strong enough to bring an obstruction of justice charge, and further, a good many seem to think it probably isn't even constitutional to bring such a charge against a sitting President. But really, this is all academic, since I doubt very much there is any such indictment in the works.

As to the question of impeachment, well, if it happens, it is still a long ways off. First and foremost, investigations are ongoing, and Comey can only speak to those investigations up to the point he was fired. What the attempt to strongarm Comey into "loyalty" and the attempt, no matter how weakly, to get Comey to drop the Flynn investigation do indicate is a man who, possibly out of ignorance, but maybe some malice as well, either doesn't know or doesn't care about the necessary limitations of his office or of the at-arms length nature of the FBI. It suggests Trump is a pretty piss poor president, at the very least, but whether it rises to the level of impeachment will take a lot more time, and really, the final calculus will be as much about whether the GOP thinks Trump remaining president as the mid-terms approach will threaten the party's political fortunes.

Impeachment is a quasi-judicial, perhaps if pseudo-judicial process. What constitutes "high crimes and misdemeanors", as Gerald Ford so bluntly put it, "is whatever Congress says it is".

Re: There is a difference

[brickhouse98]

Discredited? I think they've done more hardnose reporting this last few months than they have in years. Trump is not just a jackass- he appears to have colluded or given off a strong impression of it and it's in everyone's interests to get to the bottom of it. I haven't seen anything that they've "made up." I honestly don't think Pence would've been given the same treatment had he been the one running (or any other candidate on the R platform.)

private ?

[Tom]

"I understood this to be my recollection recorded of my conversation with the President. As a private citizen, I felt free to share that."

Not sure about the law in the USA, but here in Europe, nothing you write as part of your job is your private notes. Your employer pays for the time you spend writing it down, they probably paid for the pen and paper, and they paid you for being there and having that conversation. The notes are theirs, not yours.

Whether you support the leak or not, technically speaking he did break the law, didn't he?

Et tu, Slashdot? Consequences of poverty?

[shanen]

I guess you [BradleyUffner] deserve the insightful mod, but you didn't dig deep enough. There's another "mistake" when Slashdot uses that framing of the disclosure of the information. My question is whether Slashdot's mistake was an innocent form of clickbait or symptomatic of a deeper and darker sickness. Here's a couple of darker theories:

One theory is that Slashdot has been invaded and largely destroyed by rightwing trolls and (paid?) thugs merely because it was there and a soft target. Not a juicy target these days, since it is obvious that the readership and participation are way down, but Putin's novice cyber-warriers have to start somewhere.

Another theory is worse. Maybe Slashdot's bad financial model and possible desperation from the new owners (of the debt?) are making it cheap and easy to bribe them to tilt the system in that direction.

Anyway, I think there is a fairly skilled liar at work here. The premise of this story is a high-level lie of framing. Reporting the truth about matters of public record to the media, even through an intermediary who has friends who are reporters, is NOT the same thing as leaking secret information. Trying to present the information in the "Leak" frame is a LIE, and no more truthful just because it is a "clever" Level 4 lie. In contrast, #PresidentTweety is a quite unskilled liar, usually operating at Levels 0 (self-contradiction) and 1 (counterfactual statements (where any fool can check the facts)). Quite rare that the Donald can even get as high as Level 2 (partial truth) as in his recent out-of-context attack on the Mayor of London.

The REAL issue here is whether or not Trump has committed impeachable offenses. I'm convinced he has, but it might be that his feeble attempts to obstruct justice are his most serious offenses since he got into the White House. That also depends on the definitions of "emoluments" and "bribery", and as regards bribery, the directions of the bribes. I'm not at all certain about what sorts of pre-White-House crimes would really carry forward as grounds for impeachment. I actually believe that Trump's most serious crimes are hidden in his tax returns and they involve money laundering for Putin and his cronies.

Closing with a joke: Be careful what you wish for, Vladimir. How much money will you lose if Trump's dirty laundry gets unlaundered? The fall of the house of Trump could be costly--but I suppose you were too smart to trust the Donald with much money anyway.