the court of public opinion in real courts are not always the same thing and unless there s an ig report, this is not a great fact pattern for james comey, but giving that he had the power to classify, giving the fact that memoirs are standing operating procedures for folks that draw on their personal experiences and memories, it is far from clear that the president has a legal argument as much as he s trying to appeal to the base with a new narrative. comey, plenty of things to criticize him for, but in this instance, he s transparent about what he was trying to do. he s trying to get an independent counsel named because of how tainted he thought the justice department was at the highest levels and there s plenty of evidence for that in the book including the fact that jeff sessions is attorney general didn t protect the fbi director at all from a meddling president, and so he knew that if he could leave a trail here it would lead to an independent counsel. by the way, you have rod