Comey’s private memos on Trump conversations contained classified material
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.
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.
A spokesman for the FBI on Sunday declined to comment.
FBI policy forbids any agent from releasing classified information or any information from ongoing investigations or sensitive operations without prior written permission, and mandates that all records created during official duties are considered to be government property.
“Unauthorized disclosure, misuse, or negligent handling of information contained in the files, electronic or paper, of the FBI or which I may acquire as an employee of the FBI could impair national security, place human life in jeopardy, result in the denial of due process, prevent the FBI from effectively discharging its responsibilities, or violate federal law,” states the agreement all FBI agents sign.
It adds that “all information acquired by me in connection with my official duties with the FBI and all official material to which I have access remain the property of the United States of America” and that an agent “will not reveal, by any means, any information or material from or related to FBI files or any other information acquired by virtue of my official employment to any unauthorized recipient without prior official written authorization by the FBI.”
Comey indicated in his testimony the memos were in his possession when he left the bureau, leaving him in a position to leak one of them through his lawyer friend to the media. But he testified that he has since turned them over to Robert Mueller, a former FBI chief and now spearheading the investigation about possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
It is not clear whether Comey as director signed the same agreement as his agents, but the contract is considered the official policy of the bureau. It was also unclear when the documents were shown to Congress whether the information deemed "secret" or "confidential" was classified at the time Comey wrote the memos or determined so afterwards, the sources said.
Congressional investigators had already begun examining whether Comey’s creation, storage and sharing of the memos violated FBI rules, but the revelation that four of the seven memos included some sort of classified information opens a new door of inquiry into whether classified information was mishandled, improperly stored or improperly shared.
Ironically, that was the same issue the FBI investigated in 2015-16 under Comey about Clinton’s private email server, where as secretary of State she and top aides moved classified information through insecure channels.
Comey ultimately concluded in July 2016 that Clinton’s email practices were reckless, but that he could not recommend prosecution because FBI agents had failed to find enough evidence that she intended to violate felony statutes prohibiting the transmission of classified information through insecure practices.
“Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of the classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information," he said in a decision panned by Republicans and embraced by Democrats.
Now,congressional investigators are likely to turn their attention to the same issues to determine if Comey mishandled any classified information in his personal memos.
In order to make an assessment, congressional investigators will have to tackle key questions, such as:
Where and how were the memos were created, such as whether they were written on an insecure computer or notepad.
Where and how the memos were stored, such as inside his home, his briefcase or an insecure laptop.
Were any memos shown to private individuals without a security clearance and did those memos contain any classified information
When was it determined by the government that the memos contained classified information, before Comey took them and shared one or after.
One avenue for answering those questions is for a panel like Senate Intelligence, House Intelligence or Senate Judiciary to refer the matter to the Justice Department’s internal watchdog, the inspector general, or to the Director of National Intelligence and its inspector general, aides said.
Comey
Still waiting here, lunatics. Anything on how Comey committed perjury yet? Can I get an anonymous source at least?
You so smart you missed it?
The bit where he lied about trump not influencing him..he told that to congress - is that a good enough source for you?
Then he has memos that were he says trump did try to influence him also before congress.
DUH!
It's back there somewhere printed large too.
Please learn how to read before coming across like a total bish.
...or do you need the dictionary definition of perjury too?
I am sure CNN will have it.
I guess since its comey's own words and you can't trust comey the source eh?
yeah, that figures.
That's what the thread is all about.
Glad to see we agree he is a snake who can't be trusted.
BTW
Rgers high speed at 1 or 2 MBS, ?
Rgers totally sucks
COMEY IN JUNE: MY TRUMP MEMOS WERE UNCLASSIFIED, NOT A ‘GOVERNMENT DOCUMENT’
‘My view was that the content of those unclassified — the memorialization of those conversations was my recollection recorded’
News broke Sunday night that more than half of the notes taken by departed FBI director James Comey after his meetings with President Trump contained classified information.
Just last month Comey denied his memos contained classified material.
While testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Trump's firing of Comey, the former director stressed that these memorandums contained no classified information.
The memos, he insisted, were not "government documents" beholden to restrictions on federal records. Instead, he told Sen. Roy Blunt, he was free to share these records with his friends in the media -- which he did.
Here's a transcript from that exchange:
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."
https://news.grabien.com/story-comey-june-my-trump-memos-were-unclassified-not-government-d
Oh look: more, right from the source's mouth that can't be trusted.
