US Politics Mega-thread - Page 8042

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.

On July 10 2017 13:19 LegalLord wrote:
If Republicans were to be impeached for allowing this farce to continue, Democrats would have little cover under which to allow their own farce to continue. Face it, both sides are remarkably scummy.

On July 10 2017 13:44 Plansix wrote:
Is that new information? He testified that some of the memos had classified information in them and he only leaked the one to the professor.

On July 10 2017 14:34 xDaunt wrote:

The issue is the creation of the memos with confidential information without properly marking them as confidential/classified. The stink here is that Comey was being clumsy with classified info like Hillary was.

On July 10 2017 09:30 Wulfey_LA wrote:
On Mueller, wait for the truth and the evidence to come out. Mueller has the best 15 prosecutors on the east coast on his team. Whatever they find, they will publicize and the American people will make their decision. Actual prosecution of Trump himself is exceedingly unlikely ... but boy the guys down the ladder taking money (Manafort,Flynn,Page) and/or the guys lying under oath/forms (Kushner,Sessions) are in some serious trouble.

On July 10 2017 20:00 RoxieChan wrote:
Why do so many care about this? There is no basis in reality that Trump colluded with the Russians. Several high ranking DNC affiliates have admitted to this, several figures and publishers within the Media have admitted to this, and several of his highest critics have also admitted to just tacking on whatever they think it will stick.

On July 10 2017 20:00 RoxieChan wrote:...It is time for democrats to move on and start fighting battles that they can actually win, and that are actually important.. Like elections, maybe? They've lost 4 special elections already (out of five, which did not have a Republican running in it..)

On July 10 2017 20:27 Aquanim wrote:

How many of those elections were practically winnable, demographically speaking?

Assuming they come up with something constructive eventually I don't see how running a small-target strategy is particularly bad for the Democrats at the moment. Trying to put positive ideas into the news seems like a waste of time at this point in the electoral cycle - losing a couple of special elections is pretty small fry.

In the meantime spraying mud which may or may not be deserved on one's political opponents (and having some of it stick, whether it was accurate or not) is a time-honoured political strategy. Unfortunately.

(To emphasise, if the Democrats haven't come up with something constructive by midterms, and a viable candidate by 2020, then my opinion changes - but the fact that they haven't got one three years out seems pretty unremarkable, historically speaking.)

On July 10 2017 14:34 xDaunt wrote:

The issue is the creation of the memos with confidential information without properly marking them as confidential/classified. The stink here is that Comey was being clumsy with classified info like Hillary was.

On July 10 2017 20:50 Adreme wrote:


So the issue is he didnt mark stuff properly? Could there be a more bureaucratic nonsense issue. If he did not leak the ones with classified info then the whole thing is nothing. No one is going to care whether he gave the form the proper data entry letters.