Tag: Jim Comey

Trump administration declassifies full Susan Rice email sent on Inauguration Day

The email describes a Jan. 5, 2017, Oval Office meeting about Michael Flynn and Russian interference in the 2016 election.

On the day of President Donald Trump’s inauguration, outgoing national security adviser Susan Rice sent herself an email that has since drawn intense scrutiny from Republicans.

Now the full text of the email has been declassified, and POLITICO reviewed it. It says that then-FBI Director James Comey worried about sharing classified information with the Trump team because of incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn’s frequent conversations with the Russian ambassador but that Comey had no knowledge of Flynn sharing classified information with the envoy.

Republicans have seized on the document as potential evidence that the outgoing president had ordered the FBI to spy on the new administration, as Trump has alleged. And they have raised questions about the “unusual” nature of Rice memorializing the conversation in an email to herself, suggesting that in warning Comey to proceed “by the book,” Obama was implying that top law enforcement officials had done the opposite. Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Rice said it shows the Obama administration handled the Flynn situation appropriately. Continue reading.

Justice Dept. Declined to Prosecute Comey Over Memos About Trump

New York Times logoWASHINGTON — The Justice Department declined to prosecute the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey after determining that two memos he wrote about his interactions with President Trump contained classified information and examining whether he mishandled the documents, according to people familiar with the matter.

The F.B.I. upgraded the memos to confidential — the lowest level in the government’s system of classifying information — shortly after the president fired Mr. Comey in May 2017, the people said. Mr. Comey had kept several memos at his home and shared one with a friend when he thought they contained only routine information, but the determination that some memos included classified material prompted the investigation into whether he mishandled them.

Prosecutors quickly determined the case did not warrant charges, the people said. It is not clear which memos spurred the inquiry, but the upgrade to confidential dealt with foreign relations, a person familiar with the classification review said.

View the complete August 1 article by Adam Goldman and Katie Benner on The New York Times website here.

Can President Trump Shoot Jim Comey?

The following article by Judge Andrew P. Napolitano was posted on the Creators.com website June 7, 2018:

Credit: at Pixabay

Last weekend, the White House leaked a copy of a letter sent by President Donald Trump’s legal team on Jan. 29 to special counsel Robert Mueller. The letter set forth the president’s legal strategy, arguing essentially that he is immune from prosecution for any crime.

To soften the tone of this poorly received letter, the White House dispatched Rudy Giuliani, the president’s most visible legal spokesperson, to address the issues that his colleagues had raised. He made matters worse when he suggested that if the president ordered Jim Comey “shot in the Oval Office,” he couldn’t be prosecuted because the president can pardon himself and because the president’s personal and presidential behavior is beyond the reach of the criminal justice system. Continue reading “Can President Trump Shoot Jim Comey?”