President Trump’s outside counsel, Marc Kasowitz, will file a leak complaint regarding former FBI Director James Comey’s leaked memos with the Department of Justice, a source close to the outside legal team tells NBC News, NBC reports. Kasowitz is expected to file the complaint with the DOJ’s Inspector General and the Senate Judiciary Committee after Comey testified Thursday that he allowed a personal friend to leak unclassified memos of his conversations with the president to news outlets in hopes it would trigger the appointment of a special counsel.
“I asked a friend of mine to share the content of a memo with the reporter,” Comey said during yesterday’s Senate hearing. “I didn’t do it myself for a variety of reasons, but I asked him to because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel.”
As was revealed later in the day, Comey’s friend was Columbia Law Professor Dan Richman.
It was not clear if Comey was also the source of numerous other leaks originating at the FBI. Some republicans took issue with the fact that while the FBI had leaked much of the details of the FBI’s ongoing investigation into Russia meddling, nobody had “leaked” that there was no ongoing probe against Trump personally.
In a statement after Comey’s testimony Thursday afternoon, Kasowitz labeled Comey as “one of these leakers” who are “actively attempting to undermine the president” and strongly suggested that federal authorities investigate Comey’s leaks — even though the memo that Comey gave to a friend was not classified and was turned over after he was fired.
On Friday morning, after nearly two days of twitter-silence, Trump lashed out at Comey out as a “leaker.” He also said that he was “vindicated” while accusing Comey of “false statements and lies,” i.e., perjury.
Despite so many false statements and lies, total and complete vindication…and WOW, Comey is a leaker!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 9, 2017
via http://ift.tt/2sm0BCj Tyler Durden