Comey confidante: Trump lawyer’s complaint ‘factually false’

A friend of fired FBI Director James Comey scoffed at President Trump’s attorney Marc Kasowitz suggesting that the former top cop should be investigated for leaking so-called “privileged” information to the press, saying that such an accusation is “factually false.”

Kasowitz’s complaint, he said, only warrants “laughter,” Benjamin Wittes, the editor-in-chief of Lawfare and a Brookings Institution senior fellow, told Yahoo News.

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“Any complaint on what Jim testified yesterday, in my opinion, would be frivolous,” Wittes said. “First of all, Comey was very clear that the memo that he wrote was intentionally written in unclassified form so that it would not be bound up in classification rules. So if the claim is that he’s admitted to leaking classified information, that’s simply factually false.”

In a highly anticipated testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday, Comey told lawmakers that he had directed a personal friend to share with the press an unclassified memo he had written, detailing an interaction with the president.

By leaking the personal memo, Comey recalled, he had hoped to prompt the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel to lead the law enforcement investigation into Russian efforts to meddle in the 2016 election.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has since tapped former FBI Director Robert Mueller to head the probe.

Kasowitz, whom Trump hired last month to help him navigate the potential legal threats of the Russia investigation, said in a statement shortly after Comey’s testimony that the fired FBI director had made public “privileged” communications with the president.

But Witte rejected Kasowitz’s argument, saying that there was nothing unethical about what Comey did and that no law bars him from sharing unclassified information. 

“The real issue is whether the president has a reasonable expectation of confidentiality when he fires somebody and then lies about the circumstances in which he did that, and that strikes me as a matter in which to ask that question is also to answer it,” Wittes said. “The proper answer to Mr. Kasowitz’s complaint is laughter.”

Trump himself on Friday railed against Comey’s testimony. The former FBI director, he said, is a “leaker.”

“No collusion, no obstruction, he’s a leaker,” Trump said during a news conference in the White House Rose Garden.