Two of James Comey’s infamous memos of conversations with Donald Trump went missing, according to new documents obtained by conservative watchdog Judicial Watch pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
FBI agents visited Comey’s home in June 2017 and gathered four memos, but Comey said that he had lost track of two, according to documents that describe the visit.
Two missing memos
Comey wrote and kept memos recording his private conversations he had with President Trump prior to his firing in May 2017. He leaked some of his memos to the press through a friend, Columbia University law professor Daniel Richman, and told Congress — a day after the FBI’s visit — that he did so intentionally to spark a special counsel probe of Trump.
According an FBI evidence log obtained by Judicial Watch, Comey told agents “spontaneously” that to “the best of his recollection, two [memos] were missing.” The FBI took three memos dating from February to April, and a fourth dated, “last night at 6:30 p.m,” as “evidence.”
Comey told FBI agents that one of the missing memos was recorded sometime between Jan. 3, 2017, and Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2017. Comey wrote the memo after a phone call with then-President-Elect Trump. He e-mailed the memo to Andrew McCabe and James Rybicki, an FBI official.
The second memo, which Comey said he was “less sure” existed, was written in March of that year. Comey said he was on his way to a FBI leadership conference in Leesburg, Virginia when he was diverted to Liberty Crossing, at which point Comey contacted Trump on a top secret phone line at the president’s request. Comey said the call was “all business.”
Justice for Comey?
The New York Times published Comey’s memos in May of 2017. In them, Comey said that Trump asked him to pledge his loyalty and to drop an investigation into his former adviser, Michael Flynn. Shortly after Trump fired Comey, Robert Mueller was appointed that May.
Mueller identified President Trump’s firing of Comey as a potential attempt to obstruct the FBI’s investigation of Trump’s now-disproven collusion with Russia. The new FBI logs add to a picture of improper behavior by Comey and further undercut the argument that the president obstructed a legitimate probe by firing Comey, whom Republicans have long suspected helped whitewash the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation before turning against Trump.
Some of Comey’s memos contained classified information. The Department of Justice has declined to prosecute Comey over the memo leaks after an internal referral from the DOJ’s Inspector General Michael Horowitz. Separately, Horowitz is investigating alleged surveillance abuses in the FBI’s spying on the Trump campaign, in just one of the ongoing probes of alleged wrongdoing by top intelligence officials at the inception of the Russia investigation.
Comey signed three of four FISA warrants to spy on Carter Page, a former Trump campaign official, using the dirty Christopher Steele dossier. The former FBI director’s conduct will also come under scrutiny from U.S. Attorney John Durham, who was tapped by Attorney General Bill Barr to review misconduct at the early stages of the probe. As an effort to “investigate the investigators” behind the Russia drama has gotten underway, Comey has strenuously insisted that the FBI’s spying on the Trump campaign was totally normal and above-board, and that the president’s accusation of a “coup attempt” is a “dumb,” baseless Republican conspiracy theory.
Between the memo leaks, Comey’s many critical statements of Trump, including book tours and blistering op-eds calling Trump a “soul devourer”, and now reports of valuable documents having gone missing, Comey has shown a strong prejudice against the president. Now that Robert Mueller established through his disastrous testimony that the entire Russia investigation was a sham, there’s more than enough indication that Comey’s memo leaks, which sparked the special counsel witch hunt, were just part of a pattern of politically motivated, treasonous conduct.
“Mr. Comey’s illegal leaking these FBI files as part of his vendetta against president Trump (directly resulting in the corrupt appointment of Robert Mueller) ought to be the subject of a criminal investigation,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said.
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