by WorldTribune Staff, June 8, 2017
Former FBI Director James Comey confirmed on June 8 that, while he was heading up the FBI, President Donald Trump was not under investigation.
Comey also stated for the first time that Obama administration Attorney General Loretta Lynch asked him to downplay the Hillary Clinton email scandal as a “matter”, not an “investigation.”
During questioning by Senate Intelligence Committee chair Richard Burr, North Carolina Republican, Comey said he was uncomfortable with the meeting Lynch had with former President Bill Clinton on an airport tarmac last year.
Back to his truncated tenure with Trump administration, the ex-FBI chief sad that, after his firing, he asked a close friend of his – Columbia law professor Daniel Richman – to leak the content of his memos to the media with the hope of triggering the appointment of a special counsel.
Also on June 8, Comey refused to say whether he believed that President Donald Trump’s alleged request to shut down the investigation into former national security adviser Mike Flynn amounted to obstruction of justice – saying it was a question for the investigation’s special counsel Bob Mueller – but he called it “a very disturbing thing, very concerning.”
On Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia, Comey said: “That’s a question I don’t think I should answer in an open setting.” Comey added that he meant nothing “nefarious” with the statement, simply that he’s been out of government for a month.
On the debunked Christopher Steele dossier: Comey refused to state in the open session whether any aspects of the dossier had been verified.
Comey said the Bill Clinton-Loretta Lynch meeting convinced him that the independence of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails was tainted with regard to the Justice Department and led him to go public with the FBI’s findings on Clinton.
When Comey testified on May 3 before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he was asked about the Lynch meeting.
He told lawmakers “a number of things had gone on which I can’t talk about yet, that made me worry that the department leadership could not credibly complete the investigation and decline prosecution without grievous damage to the American people’s confidence in the justice system.”
Bill Clinton met with Lynch in June 2016 at an airport in Phoenix, Arizona. Lynch said at the time that “our conversation was a great deal about grandchildren, it was primarily social about our travels and he mentioned golf he played in Phoenix.”
On March 15, Judicial Watch sued the Justice Department for all relevant material related to the Lynch-Clinton Phoenix meeting.
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