Comey Admits Orchestrating Leak of His Memo to Press

One of the more interesting nuggets to emerge from James Comey's congressional testimony on Thursday is that he asked a friend to leak information about one of his Trump memos to the press. The move came after Comey had been fired and after President Trump had tweeted that Comey better hope no tapes existed of their conversations. Comey said it dawned on him that if such tapes did exist, they might corroborate the detailed notes he had been taking about his Trump meetings. "I asked a friend of mine to share the content of a memo with the reporter," he said. "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." (One was soon appointed.)

The friend Comey went to was Daniel Richman, a professor at Columbia Law School, reports the Washington Post, which sees Comey's statement as "a remarkable admission showing the degree of concern he had about both Russian interference with US politics, and his doubts about the Justice Department’s ability to probe such activity." Richman went on to share the memo with reporter Michael Schmidt of the New York Times, who wrote about it. "Look for White House and Republicans to attack Comey for using a friend to leak information to a reporter about his interactions with the president," predicts Adam Goldman in the Times. (More James Comey stories.)