Comey’s Double Standard?
Memos Comey wrote about meetings with Trump contained classified information. Did he leak any of it to the media?
So the latest news is that four of the seven memos former FBI Director James Comey wrote following his meetings with Donald Trump contained classified information — “secret” or “confidential,” but not “top secret.” Whether any of them were the ones he then subsequently leaked to The New York Times is unclear. If that were the case, it could land Comey in hot water — or at least it should.
At the time of his testimony before the Senate, Comey insisted that his memos were personal and therefore he did not consider them to be government documents. However, the FBI concluded that all of the memos were in fact deemed to be government documents, and therefore government property. The Hill reports, “FBI policy forbids any agent from releasing classified information or any information from ongoing investigations or sensitive operations without prior written permission, and it mandates that all records created during official duties are considered to be government property.” It would appear that Comey was playing fast and loose with the rules. We certainly know his intent from his own mouth — he wanted to bring about a special prosecutor.
In an interview with Fox News, White House Counsel Kellyanne Conway said, “The boy scout, choir boy defense doesn’t hold up here because if it contains classified information, he is apparently violating, at the very least, what all FBI members sign. They sign a document saying you will not do something like this. He was the director of the entire bureau.” She continued, “The irony, to me anyway … is that this is exactly the problem that Hillary Clinton had with her illegal server — the handling of classified and confidential information that Jim Comey was meant to investigate, if not prosecute.”
Far from being an apolitical law-and-order kind of a guy, Comey is looking more and more like an individual who was heavily invested in securing his own position of power in the Swamp. His application of rules regarding those he deemed to be the political power players like Hillary Clinton reveal why he bent over backwards to let her off. It also now appears that he saw himself as one positioned above the rules. It will be interesting to see where this news leads.
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- Donald Trump
- James Comey
- FBI