President Donald Trump directed the Department of Justice to release a host of documents related to the Russia probe on Monday, including texts between two former FBI officials who talked about stopping his rise to power.
Trump also directed DOJ to declassify pages from a warrant from a secret court that allowed the feds to spy on former campaign adviser Carter Page and all of the interview reports the bureau prepared to go along with it.
The president told Justice to publish reports tied to its interview with DOJ official Bruce Ohr, whose wife Nellie worked at the firm that put together the unverified dossier of dirt on the president, in the sweeping declassification of documents associated with the special counsel investigation.
Ohr is known to have been in contact with the dossier’s author, ex-British spy Christopher Steele.
And in a further request, Trump called for the release of text messages relating to the probe that were sent or received by ex-FBI director James Comey, whom the president last year fired.
In the dead of winter several months ago — before either one officially joined the Justice Department — Jeff Sessions and Rod Rosenstein met to discuss replacing James Comey as FBI director. Then in a February meeting at the White House, Rosenstein and President Donald Trump further “discussed” Comey’s “deeply troubling” and “serious mistakes,” Rosenstein wrote in his now-infamous letter recommending that Comey be fired.
But it turns out Rosenstein and Sessions never discussed such concerns with one key person: Comey himself.
Specifically, according to sources familiar with the matter, at no point in the weeks and months before Comey’s termination did Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein or Attorney General Sessions tell Comey they were uneasy about his leadership or upset over what Rosenstein later called Comey’s “mistaken” decision to announce the results of the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server last year.
The failure to flag any such concerns to Comey before terminating him is part of what makes the former FBI director feel so blindsided. It’s also part of the story he’s planning to tell lawmakers next week when — barring a last-minute schedule change — he testifies publicly for the first time about his axing, and about alleged collusion between Trump associates and elements of the Russian government to influence last year’s presidential election.
As one source put it: He’s “angry,” and he wants the public to understand why.
Apparently Comey was at the FBI so long that he just thinks that he should always be informed about other people’s conversations.
President Trump lashed out on Twitter Tuesday, hours after his firing of FBI Director James Comey, and accused Democrats of hypocritical criticism of the abrupt ouster.
The stunning dismissal led to Democrats and even some Republicans to boost the case for an independent prosecutor to oversee the FBI’s investigation into whether any Trump associates colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election. Many critics connected the unprecedented firing to Richard Nixon’s administration.
It’s pretty safe to say that Director Comey had lost the confidence of pretty much everyone with his bungling of multiple investigations. The only mistake Trump made here was waiting so long to pull the trigger, but I think he was waiting for Sessions to get his feet under him first.
“Somehow, her emails were being forwarded to Anthony Weiner, including classified information by her assistant, Huma Abedin,” he said.
In separate exchange with Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana, Comey said Abedin appeared to have had a regular practice of forwarding emails to Weiner for him “to print out for her so she could then deliver them to the secretary of state.”
But there was no indication that Abedin “had a sense that what she was doing was in violation of the law” Comey added, and investigators couldn’t prove any sort of criminal intent.
The fact that Clinton and Abedin previously exchanged classified emails gave federal prosecutors probable cause to justify their review of Weiner’s laptop, according to a search warrant application.
The statute does not require that Abedin knew this was against the law for it to be a crime. Also, given her high position in the administration, there is an expectation that she would know the rules around handling classified information. Comey should have recommended charges against her. In failing to do so, Comey has failed to execute his duties.
As my parents would say, if you don’t want to be called a weasel, then don’t act like one.
Comey was defending his agency’s actions regarding a federal probe into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state. The investigation drew criticism from Republicans for not recommending charges against the Democratic presidential nominee.
“You can call us wrong, but don’t call us weasels,” he told the House Judiciary Committee. “We are not weasels, we are honest people and we did this in that way.”
