By Brian Bennett / Tribune Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer lashed out at former FBI Director James B. Comey on Thursday, accusing Comey of being a “leaker” and suggesting he could be investigated for releasing accounts of his private conversations with Trump.
Trump’s Twitter account remained silent during Comey’s widely televised Senate testimony, an unusually quiet moment for a president with a track record of hitting back hard against criticism.
But within two hours after Comey finished speaking, Trump’s attorney Marc Kasowitz launched into counteraccusations. He took aim at Comey’s disclosures and attempted to link him with federal officials who over the last several months have provided reporters with details from inside the FBI and intelligence community’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 elections.
“Today, Mr. Comey admitted that he unilaterally and surreptitiously made unauthorized disclosures to the press of privileged communications with the president,” Kasowitz said, speaking to reporters at the National Press Club in Washington.
Kasowitz did not say what privilege the disclosures might have violated. Comey made a point of noting that the memos were not classified, and the White House has not claimed that executive privilege shields the conversations.
In stark contrast to several Republican senators who praised Comey’s credibility during the hearing Thursday, Kasowitz suggested Comey was part of a campaign by federal officials to undermine Trump’s administration by leaking negative stories to the press.
“It is overwhelmingly clear that there have been and continue to be those in government who are actively attempting to undermine this administration with selective and illegal leaks of classified information and privileged communications,” Kasowitz said.
“Mr. Comey has now admitted that he is one of these leakers,” he said.
But although he said Comey was untruthful, Kasowitz also said Trump felt “completely vindicated” by Comey’s testimony that the president was not being investigated personally for colluding with Russian officials during the 2016 elections. He also lauded Comey’s statement that there was no evidence that votes had been changed as a result of Russian interference.
Comey had captivated viewers for most of the morning with detailed descriptions of his private conversations with Trump, during which Comey felt Trump had asked for his loyalty and had directed him to drop the FBI investigation into Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Comey said he decided to document his interactions with Trump in memos because he was worried Trump later would lie about their meetings. After he was fired on May 9, he passed some of those memos to a friend with instructions to give them to the press. Reports later appeared in The New York Times detailing Comey’s unease with Trump’s requests.
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