Thread by @DawsonSField

The Comey Memos OIG report is out. Surprisingly as prior reports had defensive leaks in NYTs & other liberal papers. Let's see what they say.
#ButNothingsHappening

oig.justice.gov/reports/2019/o…

We now have details. Memos 1 & 3 were classified by Comey. He never took home copies of 1, 3, & 5.
He released 2, 4, 6 and a redacted version of 7.

After Comey left, the FBI classified small amounts of information in Memos 2 & 7 in June of 2017. SO he leaked the memos (1 redacted) before they were classified.

So we get to Hillary's 1st alibi, they weren't classified at the time!

THIS is important. McCabe referred Comey to the OIG for leaking classified information in July of 2017 as McCabe was still trying to use Comey as his scapegoat.

Comey's second hand leak to the NYT's only included Memo 4 which was unclassified. The upclassified memos were only shared with his lawyers.

Hillary alibi #2, she gave all of her emails to David Kendall who was not authorized to have them!

Comey testified that he believed Memos 2-7 were all personal memos.

Hillary alibi #3, she deleted all the emails her attorneys considered personal!

Comey's release to his lawyers by private email contained 6 WORDS that were later upclassified by McCabe's FBI.

6 WORDS, and the McCabe who protected Hillary referred Comey to the OIG for it!

Anyone still think McCabe & Comey are homies?

FOOTNOTES tell all!

4 of the 6 words classified in the report were country names that the President mentioned in a discussion over which countries should get prompt return phone calls from the President.

Neither Comey or his lawyers, including Richman released ANY classified information to anyone!

Neither Cotmey or his lawyers, including Richman released ANY classified information to anyone! NYT's reporter!

A useless idiot that they knew would spin it into an attack on Trump?

OIG referred Comey to DOJ for prosecution decision.

A prosecution predicated on McCabe's FBI upclassifying the names of 4 countries in a memo at the Confidential level. Memos shared only with Comey's attorneys, several of those attorneys (if not all) have security clearances.

SO McCabe's crew upclassified the memos, listing the names of 4 countries. Then referred Comey to the OIG for investigation!

I don't have a source in front of me, but I am fairly certain that the names of those countries were leaked long before McCabe upclassified them.

So those country names were already leaked before McCabe upclassified them. If you follow me, I suspect McCabe was involved in leaking that information from surveillance upon the White House. How toasted is McCabe if he leaked the info then recommended Comey to OIG!

Back to it! The DOJ OIG destroys Hillary alibi #4 using Comey as the example.

Declaring a document or email as personal does not make it so. It is still an official record that must be retained & produced according to law & policy!

They spend a long section documenting how FBI employees are not supposed to have records outside official systems or retain docs after they leave the FBI. Hillary alibi #5! In this case all pointed at Comey by McCabe. The only 2 authorized to discuss ongoing investigations!

Hillary alibi #6 an Original Classification Authority like Comey & Hillary are supposed to know when to classify documents!

Good timeline starting on Page 10!

Again, Trump discusses phone calls with foreign countries with Comey. McCabe upclassifies that information in June & refers Comey to the OIG in July!

In this memo, Comey discusses a FISA on @GenFlynn with Priebus. Then discusses leaks of classified secure phone calls with President of Mexico & PM of Australia. Leaks that probably occurred because of spying upon the White House using the FISA on Page or one on Flynn.

@GenFlynn This is interesting...
The memo about letting Flynn go, doesn't look like it was shared with McCabe.

Comey kept a copy at home & gave a copy to his Chief of Staff Rybicki!

@GenFlynn Memo's 5, 6, & 7 were also not shared with McCabe. So that is a big tell to me. Comey only shared the 1st 3 memos with McCabe. Then after the memo documenting spying on secure White House phone system communications & leaking it, he shares no more memos with McCabe.

As I have documented before, this exchange between @Comey & @realDonaldTrump seems contrived. Like it was planned & coordinated to notify people that someone was making tapes of WH conversations!

Comey then sends 3 unclassified at the time, & one redacted memo that probably should have been classified to his attorney Patrick Fitzgerald who most certainly has a security clearance as he is a former US Attorney & Special Counsel.

Then Comey provides a copy of memo 4 to Richman to leak to NYT's. Triggering a special counsel probe to take the case away from Andrew McCabe, the Deputy and Acting Director of the FBI who Comey excluded on the last 4 memos of his meetings with Trump!

McCabe's FBI then initiates a classification review of Comey's memos which McCabe would be seeing for the first time! I wonder if he found anything incriminating him & the coup plotters in those memos!

To my knowledge this section of Memo 7 is still classified but it might be released in the CNN vs. FBI case!

Here is Comey's lack of candor that we have heard about for several weeks. Comey does not tell FBI agents reporting to McCabe that his attorney's have copies of the memos!

They do not learn that until June 8th!

SO the FBI moves to secure the memos from Comey's lawyers. But why was it not completed until January 2018 more than 7 months later?

Two conversations between Comey & Trump were not memorialized in memos. I wonder what made those conversations different?

These are the 2 calls not documented in memos. January 11, 2017 & March 9, 2017. Both during critical moments in the coup plot....

The OIG description of the FBI conversations related to the 1/6/17 meeting w Trump about the salacious & unverified allegations. Sounds remarkably like Brennan, Clapper & McCabe setting up Comey as the fall guy!

Trump firing Comey was likely planned as the trigger for the coup!

But firing Comey at a time of Trump's choosing rather than when the coup plotters were ready with all the other pieces of the coup were prepared. Sabotaging their plans & their narratives!

So there are 2 versions of the classified Memo 1. One from 1/6/17 & the other dates 1/7/17. OIG says "These two versions of Memo 1 are substantively very similar..." but they only used the revised version for their report.

Comey classified Memo 1 like FISA information & did not share it with anyone other then the identified FBI recipients. Comey says he thought he'd never have additional 1 on 1 meetings with Trump after telling him about the pee tape!

This is very interesting, Comey sent a classified memo to the other IC Directors (Brennan & Clapper) to brief them on his private conversation with Trump about the dossier. OIG says it is similar to the 1/7/17 memo.
Did this trigger Clappers alleged leak to CNN about the meeting?

After that leak to CNN & Buzzfeed's publication of the dossier. President Trump arranged a phone call with Comey on 1/17/17. That Comey did not document in a memo...
Leaking the Steele Dossier was not a crime, leaking the content of Comey's Classified 1/7/17 memo & email was!

Also interesting, Trump wanted Comey to investigate & prove the dossier was false. But Comey worried that investigation would be leaked & make it look like Comey & the FBI were investigating him. Wonder who he worried would leak that? McCabe?

Interesting footnote, Trump also called Clapper the DNI about the leak of the dossier & his private conversation with Comey.

Almost like Trump knew on 1/11/17 who leaked it... Comey told Brennan he received a similar call providing a paper trail...

Memo 2 was the first "personal memo" he made 2 copies & deleted the file. Comey had Rybicki provide the memo to McCabe & Baker to read & then retrieved it so they would not have a copy. Wonder if they each got different versions to track who leaked it?

Here is Comey documenting that he violated DOJ policy to discuss with Priebus whether there was a FISA on General Flynn. If Comey was anti-Trump why would he provide warning of surveillance upon General Flynn to the WH?

The rest of the memo may provide an answer!

The OIG does not even talk about the rest of the content of that memo though! Like they didn't want to put that out there or something.
Comey classified this one because he discussed FISA information & had Rybicki show it to McCabe & Baker but not provide them a copy!

Leaving out the additional content is very interesting. Because after having a conversation about a FISA on Flynn, Trump & Comey talk about someone leaking a transcript of 2 secure phone calls from foreign leaders & @Potus made from the @WhiteHouse Situation Room

Shortly after these conversations were leaked, the White House shut down the Situation Room and remodeled it! Likely to remove bugs! You can read more about bugging the WH here.

https://twitter.com/DawsonSField/status/1073778227531968512?s=20

Most interestingly, the night before Comey was fired, the President gave @Time an interview at the White House focused entirely on illegal surveillance against the President, even showing off his secure phones! threadreaderapp.com/thread/1033084…

@TIME The OIG's silence on that topic is deafening!
Memo 4 then served to highlight that illegal leaks of NSA communications intercepts had occurred in the Flynn case & that Comey was very concerned about them!

Again Comey kept a copy, gave Rybicki a copy to show McCabe & Baker but not let them keep a copy of it! Deleting electronic versions of the memo...

Looks like Comey trusts Rybicki but doesn't trust McCabe & Baker...

So Comey wrote this memo with the intention of proving he left things out, so he could fill in the blanks later, but not reveal those blanks to McCabe, Baker & Rybicki!

Interesting indeed!

Then Comey & the leadership decided to not act upon Trump's request to let things go with General Flynn & not report it to DOJ for several reasons.

It was this memo McCabe used to start the obstruction case!

Even though Comey concealed portions of the meeting from McCabe!

It looks like McCabe took the bait! Running right into a trap set for him! Opening an obstruction case against Trump 2 days after Comey's firing, then telling the Senate Intel committee the next day that there was no evidence of obstruction!

https://twitter.com/DawsonSField/status/1097865953034072067?s=20

Memo 5 I have no idea what to think of. Who was Sessions Chief of Staff at that time? It was before @MattWhitaker46 joined the Session team at DOJ.

Questions, always questions...

@MattWhitaker46 I think some secure orders were issued this day to Comey from Trump, no memo, no briefing to McCabe & Baker, just a Rybicki call to the AG.
This was 5 days after Trump's wiretap tweets & less than a week before the FISA on Carter Page would be revealed to the Gang of 8!

@MattWhitaker46 The lifting a cloud memo #6. The 1 where Comey confirmed that he had briefed Congressional leadership that Trump was not the subject of his Russia investigation! Again it looks like Rybicki & McCabe were shown a copy but not allowed to keep one!

Can you see who is getting stung?

@MattWhitaker46 Memo 7, another lift a cloud conversation, this time Comey suggests having the request go from the WH Counsel to the Acting AG Boente. Wanting a better paper trail to avoid allegations that Comey was carrying the President's water to disperse the cloud?

Keep in mind that at that time, the DOJ OSC Hatch Act investigation against Comey started before the election was heating up. An effort to accuse Comey of rigging the election for Trump with his Hillary announcements! theguardian.com/us-news/2016/o…

Conveniently, Comey's firing ended the Hatch Act case one day befor FBI Counsel James Baker would have testified in that case. But after Rybicki got to testify that there was no political bias in Comey's announcement. Would Baker have said the opposite?

https://twitter.com/Avery1776/status/1079505634935091201?s=20

Again 2 paper copies, one to Comey's home & one to Rybicki. I don't see a mention if this one was shown to McCabe & Baker....

SO Comey is keeping a very tight lid on who gets to see these memos, after the 1st it looks like only Rybicki, McCabe & Baker. But it does seem that McCabe was keeping Lisa Page in the loop.
Reason for Comey's secrecy to keep the info from the Russia investigative team.

But McCabe was obviously sharing the information with his Special Counsel Lisa Page, who was on the Russia investigative team! Doing the exact opposite of Comey supposed intent in keeping the memos quiet!

Here are where some stories do not jive. Rybicki says he got the original and that a copy marked copy was given to McCabe by Comey and maybe to Baker. Says he didn't know Comey was keeping a copy. Says he didn't know he was supposed to retrieve them from McCabe & Baker.

Baker's story is slightly different, saying Comey would verbally brief him on the memos & tell him to get a copy from Rybicki if he needed it. Baker says he advised Comey to send Trump to the AG or DAG.

McCabe remembers seeing all but one of the memos, & recalls that Comey & Rybicki were each keeping a copy.

Here's where it gets interesting, Comey wanted the Memos private to not share with the Russia team. McCabe gave copies of Memos 1-4 to Page and she made copies of them to retain.

Comey also verbally briefed Bill Priestap FBI Assistant Director for Counterintelligence on some of the memos so he would be aware of some things that might impact the FBI, no details of course!

Now this gets very interesting, Comey shared memo 2 & discussed Memo 5 with his former Chief of Staff who was acting administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration. Now why would these CI effort be important for the guy running the DEA? Does this tie into Project Cassandra?

Nothing definitive on Comey's sharing with Wittes & Richman of Lawfare...

On May 10th, McCabe & Page go fishing for ALL of Comey's memos. Requesting them from Rybicki who says he had no clue that she retained copies already!
Why did she want them from Rybicki? Well that is the day they initiated the Obstruction investigation against President Trump!

Page says McCabe didn't tell her, conflicting Rybicki's testimony. Then Page gave the memos to Priestap for the Russia investigation! Strzok then entered only some of the memos into FBI evidence placing them within an EC marked Secret!

So between requesting from Rybicki to uploading of an Electronic Communication (which is the document to record the start of an investigation) several of the memos disappeared, I bet the most exculpatory ones!

While McCabe is treating them as FBI records & evidence to open an obstruction case, not all of them get entered into evidence between Page receiving all of them & Strzok entering them into evidence.

Correction, in the footnote they state that it was Memo 5 the unclassified email from Comey to Rybicki that was not included, & Rybicki had not included it when he handed over the memos. Looks like AFTER McCabe lied to Congress on 5/11/17, Comey reminded Rybicki of Memo 5!

Onto the leaks! For the Loyalty dinner, Comey allegedly told several people about the meeting on the grounds that they not release it publicly until he left the FBI. Almost like he knew that was going to happen & rigged the release when it seemed unlikely!

Richman briefed a reporter at NYT on the loyalty dinner in the same phone call where he heard about Comey firing!

Baker, McCabe & Page denied to the OIG that they were the second source of the NYT article. The article printed a day after they got the copies from Rybicki who says he isn't the second source either!
Recall McCabe lied about leaking to FBI INSD the morning of Comey's firing 5/9

Someone claiming Whistleblower Status gave the DOJ OIG a set of the memos to preserve them shortly after Comey was fired! Evidence!

Comey gave the memos to his attorneys after McCabe lied to the Senate Intel Committee. Redacting a paragraph that was later classified where Trump asked him to follow up on a specific foreign affairs matter. I bet that is very interesting!

Then he shredded the redacted copy he made retaining the original unredacted version!

So Comey hides from the FBI that his attorneys have copies of the memos! Wonder why he didn't want acting director McCabe to know that detail!

Then on 5/15/17, Comey calls Rybicki, reminds him of Memo 5, and asks Rybicki to give all 7 memos & 2 boxes of records to the Supervisory Special Agent who inventoried Comey's records after he was fired. Not found because they were in Rybicki's office!
Now entered into evidence!

I think Comey was worried about McCabe, not Trump, deleting any tapes of conversations between the President & Comey on bugs or illegal wiretaps. So Comey sent Richman Memo 4 by text (paper trail) the memo that he had already sent to his one attorney who would forward it next day

Okay, back to the thread! Part of the reason that I stopped was to mull over why this memo was so important. Why must that memo be leaked? Remember this is the memo Comey wrote to make certain readers knew there was classified information left out of the memo!

So is Comey hinting that someone declassified the contents of the conversation on 2/14/17? Because parts of the conversation remained classified & Comey left a big red flag to find that information.

Who would have the power to declassify the President's conversations? Yep!

Remember this is the one memo that Comey left out information that could not be declassified at that time! But it might in the future.

He chose not to write a classified version to keep it secret to deny that information to people who were not in the conversation!

Who would get to know what Comey put in the memo, but would then be denied access to the classified portions of the conversation? Everyone Comey shared the memo with! Rybicki, McCabe, & Baker. Comey's memo kept them in the dark!

It left a trail that more happened at that meeting than McCabe & others could read about. I think Comey is indicating that the President declassified portions of that conversation, but kept other portions classified so Comey could only explain them later after declassification!

So were the classified portions of that conversation about the same topic? Was @Potus asking @Comey to let @GenFlynn go because he wanted to obstruct justice? Or did he share classified information showing that Flynn was acting as a US intelligence asset? Comey let him go!

McCabe who only knew about the unclassified portion of the conversation, initiated a case against Flynn for lying to the FBI (possibly forging 302s) & started an obstruction case against Trump based upon the unclassified portion of the conversation!

Why was it so important for Comey to leak the contents of that memo to NYTs?
To get a special counsel to remove McCabe from the case! Recall that McCabe testified on 5/11/17 that there was no evidence of an effort to impede the case. But the leaked memo provided that evidence!

Why do Trump & Comey reply to McCabe's testimony by engaging in a Twitter fight about that meeting and the existence of tapes of that meeting?

Would those tapes reveal that the classified portion of the conversation were Trump's alibi against obstruction?

Were those tapes also the evidence of the illegal spying? We know that Obama holdovers at DOJ were part of the plot against Trump. Which is why a Special Counsel needed to be appointed to take the case from McCabe and DOJ National Security Division.

So Comey concealed that he had the memos and that he was going to share them. Concealed it from McCabe & the DOJ!
He had to reveal that there was a classified reason for not going after General Flynn!

What could that classified reason be?

Well on May 25, 2017, a week after Mueller took the case from McCabe, the Defense Intelligence Agency provided a briefing to Senator Grassley about the classified reason to let Flynn go! Not declassified and McCabe & the coup plotters would not learn about it until this letter!

A letter written on 8/25/17! after McCabe had been caught lying under oath after Peter Strzok was interviewed by Mueller investigators about the Flynn 302 issue in late July!
But 3 months before General Flynn was forced to plead guilty!
judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/…

So on 8/25/17, we have a Grassley letter to Mattis confirming that there is a classified reason for letting Flynn go. We also have a classified portion of the meeting between Trump & Comey that explained why Comey let Flynn go!
But McCabe didn't let Flynn go!

So why did Comey release his memo to the NYTs?

Because he loved his country, DOJ & FBI forcing him to inform the world that there was a classified reason for letting @GenFlynn go! A reason that was being buried by Andrew McCabe in his witch hunt for Trump!

@GenFlynn Why did he go through Richman, to avoid having to explain more to the reporters! Which would ruin the effort to catch McCabe & the others.
Even better, Comey wore a white hat to take out the trash in the first pictures he let them take of him after his firing!

@GenFlynn Yes Comey could have said all things to the press, Congress, or investigators without the memos. But the memos contain facts put in writing contemporaneously with the events which are much stronger!
Even better if the people needing red pilled falsely think the memos hurt Trump!

@GenFlynn Sharing the info with Richman also opened up a claim of attorney client privilege between Comey & Richman.

Now Comey forgets to mention Executive Privilege that could cover his conversation with President Trump! Maybe the President waved that permission so Comey could publish it

@GenFlynn But once this story leaked, and was linked to Comey, McCabe and everyone else thought the memo provided evidence of obstruction sending the Dems on a wild goose chase that some still have abandoned!

@GenFlynn So Richman got the leak on May 16th, the same day as the story. But the article had 2 sources who had read the memos. Who was the 2nd? Per the OIG it has to be a list of about 6 people. Rybicki, his deputy, McCabe, Page, Strzok, & Priestap.

Who contacted the NYTs first?

I ask who contacts NYT's first because it is probably relevant. Did Richman contact them on the 16th, they then contacted 1 of the 6 and got confirmation & got it published on the 16th? It is possible but very quick for a major paper with such a major story.

But what if 1 of the coup plotters told the NYTs first? What if the coup plotters told the NYTs about the memo & put their spin on it. Then Comey had Richman reach out to the exact same reporter to get a more accurate description into the story? Was it a counter-leak!

How would you get a NYT's reporter to correct spin put upon it from a coup plotter leaker?
By having someone read portions of the memo to them to correct false information the coup plotters gave the NYTs!

Who is the subject of a criminal leak investigation by John Durham? Baker

OIG interviewed four suspects for the leak: Baker, McCabe, Page, & Rybicki.
Baker is under investigation for leaking. McCabe was fired for lying about leaking, Page was leaking on McCabe's orders.
Rybicki, the one Comey seems to have trusted, not under a known leak investigation.

So before Comey is to testify about his memos, he wants to review them to confirm he released no classified information in his leaks!

So who initiates the classification? On 6/1/17 James Baker goes to the FBI CI legal unit to have them set down with Strzok & Page to decide to upclassify Comey's memos. You don't think Page was doing that on McCabe's orders do you? Great so now those three are on the hook for it!

Not exactly, because they then had the legal unit leader take it to Bill Priestap to get him to sign his life away on the classification review!

So Baker, our leaker that is under investigation, was the one who recommended upclassified things about foreign leaders based on his experience working with the State Dept on Hillary's emails!
Did he leak on 05/16 the same information that he upclassified on 6/1 to set up Comey?

Then they ran over the Legal Unit Chief who had very little experience classifying information prior to this. Run over by Page & Baker who had lots of experience designating information as classified!

Baker & Page convinced the Law Unit Chief to ignore standard practice of letting agencies who controlled the information declare if it was classified. So they prevented State from deciding if the info about foreign leaders was really classified! All to claim Comey leaked it!

In fact, Baker and the others discussed the fact that they were over riding Comey's authority as an OCA, original classification authority, to classify information that Comey had officially declared to be unclassified! Overriding Comey with a non-standard procedure no less!

Page even says that their efforts were to protect the FBI, not Comey!

Because they were throwing him under the bus! Overriding his decision & belief that the memos were not classified! When he was the authority to decide that as an OCA!

Page told the OIG that they tried to be conservative in their approach, maybe classify information that did not need to be classified like those 6 words Comey leaked!

There goes that word thoughtful again...

Warm up the second bus!
Baker says they wanted the upclassification to look plausible enough that they could dupe Bill Priestap to sign an affidavit declaring that the information that Page, Baker & Strzok upclassified was legitimately classified!

So they basically ran over the Law Unit Chief, duped Priestap into believing this was a legitimate upclassification process, thought they used a non-standard classification process.

All to claim that 6 words Comey leaked to his lawyers (not the press) were classified information

Can you now see how Comey was framed for leaking classified information?

Do you think that explains why Barr did not prosecute Comey?

So 3 coup plotters tap dancing around legal rationales to get the Law Unit Chief to agree to their classification decisions. But of course they kept no notes to document all of this!

But maybe they weren't intentionally framing Comey? Maybe they had other motives!

The classification review was meant to limit Comey's testimony to Congress in early June 2017.

The OIG says they did not know Comey had leaked the memos at the time of the upclassification, is that just an excuse to hide that they were trying to frame Comey? Time will tell!

Baker says that the countries mentioned in Memo 2 (the one Comey gave his lawyers) should have been classified information even if Comey chose to not classify it.

The Unit Chief said it would be reasonable for someone else, like Comey the author, to decide to not classify that information.
But Baker, Page & likely Strzok got those 6 words classified! Then got the Unit Chief to get Priestap to sign off on it!

The Unit Chief got a double check from the FBI's Assistant General Counsel (Baker's subordinate) that the information wasn't classified under FBI guidelines, but to ere on the side of caution & over rule Comey to classify it anyway!

But they did not bother to ask the State Department to rule on the classification of the information. Heck they might disagree and time was short!

Did they ask State later? I doubt it, they just referred Comey to OIG for leaking classified information!

Comey declared Memo 3 to be classified but did not mark it or say specifically what sections & words were classified. The 4 FBI personnel decided what Comey could not tell Congress about in his testimony!

Memo 7, how far can they push classification & still dupe Priestap into signing it as the affiant on the classification review!

Again, on Baker & Page's recommendation they classified State Dept. equities as classified information without allowing State to make that decision. Overruling Comey's authority as the OCA for FBI who decided it was unclassified.

Then they send it to Priestap to serve as the OCA, approving the consensus of the Law Unit, Page, Stzok & Baker.
Why did they want Priestap to sign it?
Baker was also an OCA & could have classified it all himself!
He wanted someone else's signature on it!
Bus enter stage left...

SO then the Unit Chief takes the proposed classifications to Priestap, explains why it may be classified (per Baker) then has Priestap sign his life away. When Baker could have done it all on his own!
But then they can blame Priestap for making the final determination!

Classified per Priestap, with no indication that it was a canned result brought to Priestap that had been engineered by Baker, Page & Strzok!

Then Page & Strzok put official typewritten markings onto the memo classifications that Priestap had signed off on!

Had to make it as official as possible!

The next day they take the memos to Comey for him to review for his testimony on the 8th. Comey instantly objects to the addition of the Secret classified markings on Page 2 of Memo 2!

SSA working for McCabe says he doesn't remember that!

Comey thought some of the classification decisions might be reasonable, but that the classification of Memo 2 was unreasonable!

Comey says not to sweat the different classification made by Comey as OCA or Priestap as a spoon fed OCA. These are often judgement calls.
Besides, the final decision would be with the agency whose equities are impacted. The State Dept not the FBI! Well unless the FBI doesn't ask

Following Comey's review of the now classified memos, he gave his copies of all 4 memos he had to the FBI SSA with a receipt for the documents! They've alleged that Comey lacked candor by not telling this agent that he had shared the memos that are now marked classified.

Another footnote! the court in the CNN case ruled that only 1 of the 6 words (probably the small country Trump insulted) should have been classified by the FBI.

SO we have a judge arguing the Baker, Page, Strzok upclassification was not legally correct!

Interesting, Comey says that he gave his memos to the FBI, not because of the classification issue. But that it was planned because Mueller had asked Comey for these memos. Memos that contained exculpatory evidence to help Trump!

The FBI says they learned about the sharing of the now classified memos from Richman. Wonder if they were spying on Comey or his attorneys after he left?

Comey's usual parsing, he didn't tell Senator Collins about the other 3 memos he shared because she only asked about the one. Some have accused him of lying for not volunteering the rest of the information. But he always parses every word to answer not unanswered questions.

I also find it interesting that Comey did not exert attorney client privilege with Richman (who was his attorney) because he wanted to discuss the information he leaked not hide behind privilege!

Comey testifying about sharing the memo cause Baker, Strzok and the rest to outright panic! Literally running down the hall to a private space so Baker could get Richman on the phone & hand him over to Strzok!

FBI now knew that the unclassified version of the memos they used to start a criminal investigation of the President had been shared with Comey's three attorneys! Panic!

Wonder if they had inserted the classified versions in place of the originals when they filed it?

It gets better! While the Unit Chief & Preistap were attempting to collect the 'classified' memos they neglected to inform the FBI Security Division of the leak or spill as they termed it.
Wonder who made that call?

This seems like a very odd way to delete the memos from Richman's computer? Make a mirror copy of his entire hard drive, take it to FBI, then give him a copy back without the offending files.
Wonder what else they were looking for?

Remember, Richman is an unpaid special employee with a security clearance advising Comey on cases. Like global corruption & money laundering cases.

Were they digging for information to thwart Comey's other cases?

It gets better yet, they wanted the computer of Comey's special assistant for 10 days on June 13 because it was so urgent to protect that classified information! That's plausible right, it was only about the classified info, had to protect that from disclosure.

But they waited until November to ask the other 2 lawyers to delete the files & it was not completed until January 16th 2018!

There must be another reason for wanting Richman's computer, unrelated to the classified memos that they left on Fitgerald's computer for 7 more months!

Now the review, McCabe referred Comey for leaking classified information in July 2017, the FBI left this information on Comey's attorney's computers until January 2018. So they weren't too concerned.
OIG presented facts, Barr's DOJ rejected prosecution!

Comey violated the FBI's employee handbook!

Another gigantic footnote!
The OIG learned about the FBI's inattention to retrieving information from Comey attorney's not named Richman, in a letter to the OIG from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. This means they caught the FBI in this conflicting information!

Comey's violation on Memo 3. He wrote it & sent it on classified systems, but did not place classification markings upon the document. A document sent & received on a classified computer system that no one should be able to take out of a SCIF.

Again pointing out that Comey's memos were used as part of the Electronic Communication, the file opened when McCabe had his team start investigations of the President based on the memos!

Comey's leak through Richman provided sensitive information on the Flynn case, evidence that might alert suspects that there was an FBI investigation into Flynn & obstruction by Trump.
How is warning Trump & Flynn a bad thing for Trump?

Remember, Comey warned the world that McCabe might be pursuing @GenFlynn & @Potus for criminal charges. In an effort to trigger a special counsel to take the case away from McCabe & people @Comey did not trust at DOJ!

@GenFlynn @POTUS @Comey An issue of such incredible importance that Comey had to warn about the potential obstruction case to protect the Nation, DOJ & FBI from what his former deputy was doing!

@GenFlynn @POTUS @Comey A revelation that left the coup plotters “surprised,”
“stunned,” “shocked,” and full of “disappointment”!

I bet it did!

Which may explain why Comey felt it necessary to violate FBI policy on documents rather than trust to the now McCabe lead FBI to provide them to his attorneys. We all know how well the FBI can stonewall on a good day!

Yep, Comey failed to tell McCabe and the coup plottes that he had provided copies of the original memos to his legal counsel including a former US attorney & special counsel!

Comey shared 4 Memos with his attorneys. In Memo #7 he blocked out the paragraph that FBI retroactively classified. 2 Memos had not classified information. Memo #2 had 6 words the FBI retroactively classified, a judge ruled 5 of those words did not require classification!
1 WORD

In addition that 1 word could not be classified by the FBI under their own classification guidelines! That word's classification would have to be approved by the agency whose jurisdiction covered other countries, the State Dept. The FBI never asked them to classify it! Wonder Why

@threadreaderapp unroll please!