Dismissed FBI director James Comey admitted during congressional testimony Thursday that he orchestrated the leak last month of a memo that detailed private conversations he had with President Donald Trump.
The memo was cited May 16 in a New York Times article that revealed Comey felt Trump pressured him to drop his investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Flynn was forced to resign in February, 24 days into his appointment, after it was revealed that he lied to Vice President Mike Pence about conversations he had with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak.
>> Related: Report: Trump asked Comey to drop Flynn investigation
Comey said he decided to share his memo through another party after Trump wrote days after Comey’s abrupt dismissal that “James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press.”
“I woke up in the middle of the night on (May 15), (because) it didn’t dawn on me originally that there might be corroboration for our conversation -- there might be a tape,” Comey said. “My judgment was (that) I needed to get that out in the public square, so I asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter. (I) didn’t do it myself for a variety of reasons, but I asked him to because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel. So I asked a close friend of mine to do it.”
Comey said he leaked his memo to news organizations through an unnamed friend who works as a professor at Columbia University.
Columbia law professor Daniel Richman confirmed to multiple news outlets that he acted as the intermediary.
Comey said he decided to use a go-between because he was worried about the increased media scrutiny the memo was likely to bring.
“The media was camping at the end of my driveway at that point,” he said. "I was actually going out of town with my wife to hide, and I worried that it would be like feeding seagulls at the beach.”
In the memo leaked to The Times, which was not shared in-full with the newspaper but instead summarized for reporters, Comey detailed a Feb. 14 meeting he had with Trump in the Oval Office. Flynn resigned Feb. 13.
“I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” Trump said, according to the memo. “He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”
The memo provided the first hint that Trump might have attempted to influence an FBI investigation, leading critics to question whether the president obstructed justice.
Trump has denied Comey’s account of the conversation.
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