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
the fact that these memos, when they were first leaked, included sensitive information. even james comey and his emails with regards to the memo, he is acknowledging he put up classification on this information. and he asked if it should be classified at a higher level. he was well aware there is a classification that needed to be placed on the sensitive info. harris: two memos given to the columbia professor, who comey had described as a friend, the wall street journal, excuse me, that s where the source is on this reporting period he had given it to this columbia professor. i m wondering on the handle, do you want to know more about this professor? i m pretty sure that james comey s story, as we are hearing from others, there was some kind of attorney-client relationship, it was one bizarre scenario that
conformance with the rule of law. so, i think i m the only one here in this esteemed group who may have at one point in my career been described as a disgrace. how far away from reality is that, john carolin from who comey was? put the whole body of his life up there. i think you can say more about it but it got isolated around the hillary e-mail investigation. there s scrutiny that the consequences are well beyond, perhaps what he intended. but disgrace part is in hack, you know. i don t know about that. it s a strange phrase to use for this most of his life republican, director of the fbi who, if he s been known for one thing, it s been causing equal agitation to both sides of the
on personal loyalty and the concept this president has that somehow the fbi serves at his pleasure as opposed to on behalf of the american people and in conformance with the rule of law. so, as someone who i think i m the only one here in this esteemed group who may have at one point in my career been described as a disgraced partisan hack. how far away from reality is that, john carlin, from who comey was? put the whole body of comey s life up there, and i think you can say a lot of things about him, that he got a little isolated, the decisions made around the hillary clinton e-mail investigation are certainly worthy of policy debate, review and scrutiny. that their consequence are well beyond perhaps even what he intended. but disgraced partisan hack, you know, i don t know about that. it s a strange phrase to use