Dozens of the footnotes refer to memos Comey wrote recording his account of meetings and phone calls with President Trump. These include memos dated Jan. 7 and Jan. 28, 2017, as well as notes from Feb. 14, March 30 and April 11. Those memoranda were treated as the evidentiary gold standard by Mueller. Long stretches of the special counsel’s report hang almost exclusively on Comey’s say-so. One or another of Comey’s memos are cited some three dozen times in Volume II alone, which addresses possible obstruction by Trump. Mueller relies on Comey memos in footnotes 109, 110, 111, and 112, and then in footnotes 172, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182 and so on.
Comey was also interviewed by the FBI and numerous are the footnotes — 68, 108, 109-112, 176-78, 180-82 and more — anchoring the narrative in his testimony.
Mueller relied so heavily on Comey’s memos that he felt the need to argue the superior believability of the former FBI head’s version of events. He uses legal citations that “contemporaneous written notes can provide strong corroborating evidence” and that “a witness's recitation of his account before he had any motive to fabricate also supports the witness's credibility.” Perhaps. But Comey was not a disinterested observer. As Paul Sperry reports for RealClearInvestigations, citing sources familiar with an internal Justice Department review, the FBI director Trump inherited was secretly trying to build a conspiracy case against the president.
Which means that Comey was writing his memos with an eye to swaying future legal and public opinion. Upon finishing a memo, he would run it by his top deputies (see footnotes 187 and 188 in Volume II) to make sure it served its purpose. Comey’s memos may or may not be the “strong corroborating evidence” Mueller claims, but Comey surely intended for those memoranda to establish his version of events. For all his suspicions and speculations about the president’s intentions, one former FBI director demonstrates a remarkable lack of curiosity about the motives of another former FBI director.
https://www.realclearinvestigations...eports_footnotes_to_contradictory_119658.html
Comey was also interviewed by the FBI and numerous are the footnotes — 68, 108, 109-112, 176-78, 180-82 and more — anchoring the narrative in his testimony.
Mueller relied so heavily on Comey’s memos that he felt the need to argue the superior believability of the former FBI head’s version of events. He uses legal citations that “contemporaneous written notes can provide strong corroborating evidence” and that “a witness's recitation of his account before he had any motive to fabricate also supports the witness's credibility.” Perhaps. But Comey was not a disinterested observer. As Paul Sperry reports for RealClearInvestigations, citing sources familiar with an internal Justice Department review, the FBI director Trump inherited was secretly trying to build a conspiracy case against the president.
Which means that Comey was writing his memos with an eye to swaying future legal and public opinion. Upon finishing a memo, he would run it by his top deputies (see footnotes 187 and 188 in Volume II) to make sure it served its purpose. Comey’s memos may or may not be the “strong corroborating evidence” Mueller claims, but Comey surely intended for those memoranda to establish his version of events. For all his suspicions and speculations about the president’s intentions, one former FBI director demonstrates a remarkable lack of curiosity about the motives of another former FBI director.
https://www.realclearinvestigations...eports_footnotes_to_contradictory_119658.html
