On May 11, the day before the Trump tweet, the NY Times
printed a story, also citing ‘associates’ of Comey with information from the dinner meeting Trump had with Comey. The article even referenced the ‘private dinner’ meeting in the title “In a Private Dinner, Trump Demanded Loyalty. Comey Demurred” while citing information which supposedly was in the memo, including the ‘loyalty’ demand.
This shows that there was already a conduit running between the NY Times and Comey through the associates, it wasn’t prompted by the Trump tweet as Comey claimed under oath to Congress.
Indeed, the Trump tweet may have been a reaction to the May 11 story, as the May 11 story made it obvious that Comey must have leaked since only he would know details of the private dinner meeting and the paper
cited his associates.
In regard to the May 11 article, Isaac Simpson of Medium
wrote, “It makes little sense that ‘associates’ of Comey would remember the verbiage of the conversation with such detail, and then independently leak that verbiage without any direction from Comey himself, particularly when Comey admitted that he was willing to make such leaks only a week later.”
This problem in the timeline was what Trump’s lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, referred to in his statement about Comey’s rationale for his actions being false.
“The public record reveals that the New York Times was quoting from these memos the day before the referenced tweet, which belies Mr. Comey’s excuse,” a statement from Kasowitz said.
Comey needs to be grilled further on the May 11 story and if he was behind orchestrating that leak.
