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Everything We Learned From the James Comey Memos

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Trump’s House GOP allies demanded their release, though they highlight his desire to jail reporters, his McCabe grudge, and his pee tape fixation.
In the week since fired FBI director James Comey’s book was released, President Trump has been unusually upbeat. Why? According to CNN, “He’s pleased at how Republicans and the White House led the charge to try and discredit the former FBI director.”
It’s true that House Republicans have ratcheted up their efforts to undermine Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and thus the Russia investigation, in the past week – but their latest move may have backfired. After being threatened with a subpoena and even impeachment, Rosenstein gave in on Thursday and released all 15 pages of Comey’s memos documenting his interactions with Trump.
On the left this raised further questions about Rosenstein’s integrity, but it doesn’t appear the memos had the effect Republicans intended. In at statement the three GOP committee chairmen who demanded that the memos be released – Representatives Bob Goodlatte, Trey Gowdy, and Devin Nunes – said they show Trump “made clear he wanted allegations of collusion, coordination, and conspiracy between his campaign and Russia fully investigated. The memos also made clear the ‘cloud’ President Trump wanted lifted was not the Russian interference in the 2016 election cloud, rather it was the salacious, unsubstantiated allegations related to personal conduct leveled in the dossier.”
But Democrats said that if anything, the memos corroborate Comey’s public accounts about his interactions with Trump, and add more credence to claims made in the Steele dossier. Here are all the big revelations.
Comey said the president brought up the “golden showers thing” in almost every interaction they had, passionately insisting that it was untrue. Often in the same breath, he would reject credible misconduct allegations and deny the fact that he mocked a disabled reporter, which is a bit curious.
Here’s how Comey described telling Trump about the Steele dossier’s most notorious allegation in a one-on-one meeting weeks before the inauguration:
And here’s the unprompted pee tape discussion from Trump and Comey’s “loyalty dinner”:
Comey said he stopped by the Oval Office in early February 2017, and Trump brought up the pee tape once again. But this time he revealed that Putin told him Russia’s sex workers are top notch:
It’s possible Trump was referring to comments Putin made publicly around that time. Or maybe the two chatted about hookers during their first official phone call:
During their interview on Thursday night, Comey and Rachel Maddow agreed that’s not common banter for heads of state:
He brought up the former FBI deputy director, whose wife ran as a Democrat in Virginia and lost, during three separate interactions with Comey:
After the memos were made public on Thursday night, Trump proclaimed:
Yet Comey’s account of his January 2017 dinner with Trump is still some of the best evidence to the contrary:
The memos provide a fuller account of two less famous Trump-Comey interactions. Comey said Trump called him on March 30,2017 and went on about how the Russia probe was hurting his presidency, urging him to help downplay it publicly.
Comey said Trump called him again on April 11,2017 to inquire about why he hadn’t announced that he wasn’t personally under investigation. He recalled that when he told Trump he should take that up with the proper channels (having the White House counsel call the acting attorney general), the president responded: “Because I have been very loyal to you, very loyal, we had that thing, you know.” Comey said nothing but assumed he was referring to the loyalty dinner.
Days before Michael Flynn’s firing, Trump told Comey he was upset that the national security adviser hadn’t promptly set up a return phone call for a foreign head of state. The leader’s name is redacted, but previous reporting reveals Trump was worried about offending Putin.
Thirteen days after then-Acting Attorney General Sally Yates warned the White House that Flynn had lied about his conversation with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak, then-Chief of Staff Reince Priebus asked Comey if he was under a FISA warrant. Comey’s answer was redacted, but it appears he said yes.
Five days later Flynn was fired, and about a week after the Priebus-Comey conversation, the chief of staff reportedly asked top FBI officials to publicly dismiss media reports about possible contact between Trump campaign officials and Russians during the campaign. The FBI refused.
Many on the right, including Trump, have accused Comey of leaking classified information when he passed part of his notes to a law professor friend, who then read them to a reporter. The friend has said none of the memos he received were marked classified, and indeed several pages are marked “unclassified” (others were partially redacted for public release).
Here’s Comey’s full description of their conversation on the day after Flynn resigned:
“Lock her up” may have seemed like something the Trump campaign was pushing because it riled up the base, but Comey said that in private both Priebus and Trump suggested she should have been charged in the email probe.
Comey said of Priebus: “He then pressed me on why it wasn’t chargeable ‘gross negligence,’ and I took him through the facts and the law.”
And during a conversation with Trump, he “explained that the investigators all agreed there was no case; he said he disagreed and thought there was a case.”
The two men had their differences, but at least they could still laugh about implied prison rape.

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