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Summary: President Donald Trump’s lawyers said that they plan to file a formal complaint against former FBI Director James Comey.Â
President Donald Trump is known to be litigious and vindictive, and his battle with James Comey may not be over anytime soon.
On Thursday, former FBI Director James Comey gave shocking testimony in Washington, DC. Speaking to a Senate Intelligence Committee which consisted of congressmen like Marco Rubio and John McCain, Comey accused President Trump of being a liar. Comey said that because he did not trust Trump’s truthfulness, he started to document their conversations and ended up leaking a memo to a friend at Columbia University.
“My judgment was I needed to get that out into the public square. So I asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter,” Comey said Thursday.
Comey appeared in front of the committee to discuss his abrupt firing on May 9. When he was let go, Trump’s administration originally said that he was terminated for incompetence regarding his bungling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation. However, Trump later admitted that Comey was fired due to his demoralizing of the FBI.
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Comey said that while he was the director of the FBI, he had private meetings with the president. During these encounters, Trump tried to sway him into dropping his investigation into General Michael Flynn, who allegedly had ties to Russia. During his Thursday testimony, Comey said that he documented these conversations in case he would one day need to “defend” himself from defamation.
In response to the admission of giving away the memo, Trump’s personal legal team, which includes attorney Marc Kasowitz, is planning on filing a complaint against Comey with the Justice Department Inspector General and the Senate Judiciary Committee. This complaint is expected to be turned in early next week.
According to CNN, the complaint is not a lawsuit and the DOJ has little jurisdiction over its former employees. However, the complaint can lead to an investigation and possibly affect Comey’s future at the FBI if he ever wished to return.
After Comey’s testimony, Republicans sought to discredit him for “leaking” information about Trump. However, Comey denied leaking. He said that his memos were of unclassified information and that when he had his private one-on-one meetings with Trump there was never any executive privilege applied.
Despite Comey’s explanation, President Trump believes he is a “leaker” and expressed his disappointment with him on Twitter.
“Despite so many false statements and lies, total and complete vindication…and WOW, Comey is a leaker!” Trump tweeted on Friday morning.
Norm Eisen, former White House Ethics czar for President Barack Obama, told CNN that he believed Comey did nothing improper.
“The conversation was not classified, and neither was the memo about it,” Eisen said. “DOJ rules do not prohibit the disclosure of such information. The conversation was not subject to the attorney-client privilege or other privileges since Comey was obviously not acting as Trump’s lawyer. And if any privileges did apply, Trump waived them by repeatedly disclosing the contents of his conversations with Comey.”
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Photo courtesy of NBC News
