Podcast: Play in new window | Download ()
Subscribe: Android | RSS | More
Former FBI Director James Comey lied when he repeatedly told President Trump the agency was not investigating him in connection with the now-discredited allegations that he “colluded” with the Russians to win the 2016 election.
While Comey repeatedly assured Trump he was in the clear, Paul Sperry reported for Real Clear Investigations on Monday, Comey also ran a counterintelligence operation against him.
Sources familiar with the evidence told Sperry that Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department’s inspector general, has turned up hard evidence of Comey’s subrosa effort to finger Trump as an espionage asset for Russia.
Comey’s COINTELPRO
Sperry’s sources, he wrote, “tell RealClearInvestigations that Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz will soon file a report with evidence indicating that Comey was misleading the president. Even as he repeatedly assured Trump that he was not a target, the former director was secretly trying to build a conspiracy case against the president, while at times acting as an investigative agent.”
Frighteningly, after Trump was elected, Comey “was essentially ‘running a covert operation against’ the president, starting with a private ‘defensive briefing’ he gave Trump just weeks before his inauguration,” the sources told Sperry.“They said Horowitz has examined high-level FBI text messages and other communications indicating Comey was actually conducting a ‘counterintelligence assessment’ of Trump during that January 2017 meeting in New York.”
That was the meeting at which Comey gave Trump “the Democratic-commissioned dossier compiled by ex-British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. Reports of that meeting were used days later by BuzzFeed, CNN and other outlets as a news hook for reporting on the dossier’s lascivious and unsubstantiated claims.”
Comey met with Trump the day after he met in the Oval Office with President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and Obama’s top aides.
Comey, Sperry reported, spoke with Trump nine times between January and May 2017, when Trump canned him. “Almost every time, he went back to FBI headquarters and wrote up a memo documenting not only his version of the conversation, but also a complete update of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, the FBI’s code name for the Trump-Russia probe it launched in July 2016.”
Comey’s copious note-taking included his detailed memo about his conversation with Trump at a private dinner at the White House in January 2017. Comey attached the memo to the case file, Sperry wrote, “much like a field agent writing up” a report after speaking to a criminal suspect.
Comey locked it in a safe, shared it with top bureau personnel, then “did some online sleuthing, personally searching Trump on Google and even looking through hours of YouTube videos of him.”
The IG and his team, Sperry reported, “have examined more than 1 million records and conducted more than 100 interviews, including sit-downs with Comey and other current and former FBI and Justice Department personnel.”
Trump Tower
Sperry’s full report discloses a Comey mole in the White House who, on leaving that job, contracted with the anti-Trump Buzzfeed website to verify information in the infamous Steele dossier. Yet the former employee still had access to the White House through his successor, who signed him in.
But most revealing of all is “defensive briefing” about Russian “active measures” at Trump Tower.
When Comey met with Obama and his underlings, “Comey was chosen to confront Trump” with accusations that he was “compromised by Russia and engaging in a criminal conspiracy with Moscow to hack the election.”
The inspector general has reviewed high-level FBI text message and other communications that indicate the agency may also have used the briefing for the covert purpose of carrying out a “counterintelligence assessment” operation against Trump and his senior staff who attended the briefing that day.
After meeting with Trump and other top officials, the sources told Sperry, Comey cleared the room for a one-on-one meeting and briefed the president about the dossier’s “lurid rumor about prostitutes in a Moscow hotel, while omitting … that he had signed a wiretap warrant to eavesdrop on one of Trump’s campaign advisers based on other parts of the dossier.”
Nor did Comey divulge that the FBI was investigating General Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser, and Carter Page, a top Trump campaign aide. Comey also withheld another important fact: The Clinton campaign financed Steele’s work.
Though Comey told Trump “we are not investigating you, sir,” Sperry wrote, “Comey typed up his notes on his laptop in his government vehicle less than five minutes after he walked out of Trump Tower, according to a heavily redacted Jan. 7, 2017, email to his top aides. Comey self-classified the notes at the ‘SECRET’ level.”
“I executed the session exactly as planned,” Comey wrote to his “sensitive matter team.”
Comey denied any such counterintelligence operation in his memoir, Sperry wrote. “He also twice denied investigating Trump, under oath, in congressional testimony.”
Photo: AP Images
