We’re about a week removed from the James Comey testimony, although at the rate the Trump administration creates ridiculous news stories it seems like a lot longer. Especially since Attorney General Jeff Sessions is now scheduled to make his own hearing appearance. But what prompted James Comey to go public? For him, it was all about a Tweet:
James Comey better hope that there are no "tapes" of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017
That, Comey said, was the catalyst for him going public about his conversations with President Donald Trump:
“The President tweeted on Friday, after I got fired, that I better hope there’s not tapes… I woke up in the middle of the night on Monday night, because it didn’t dawn on me originally, that there might be corroboration for our conversation, there might be a tape.”
All of this corroborating evidence was in the memos Comey wrote after the meetings with President Trump. But he wasn’t sure where to start, or how to make safe contact with the press. So he called a friend. Daniel C. Richman is a close Comey adviser, former federal prosecutor, and a professor at Columbia Law School.
The rest, of course, is history.
Trump’s outside counsel Marc Kasowitz was none too pleased about the “leak:”
“Today, Mr. Comey admitted that he leaked to friends his purported memos of these privileged conversations, one of which he testified was classified… He also testified that immediately after he was terminated, he authorized his friends to leak the contents of these memos to the press in order to ‘prompt the appointment of a special counsel.'”
And even though the Trump administration may be angry about Comey going public with the conversations, University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck says that nothing Comey did was illegal:
“It’s not generally illegal for former government employees — or their friends — to disclose internal government memos without appropriate authorization… There is no legal blowback here.”
So while the White House may huff and puff about leaks and classified information, they may want to do some research on what that actually is first.
Watch a great summation of Comey’s testimony here:
Featured image from YouTube video.
