Comey Indictment Set to Expose Criminal Leaking Enterprise

Documents from a previous FBI investigation into unlawful leaks to the media coupled with the indictment against Jim Comey could spell trouble for more than just the disgraced former FBI director.

After a grand jury handed up the brief federal indictment of former FBI Director James Comey last week, many observers, including myself, initially speculated that the charges related to a nearly decade-old leak made right before the 2016 presidential election. A Virginia grand jury indicted Comey on two counts—false statement to Congress and obstruction of Congress—on September 25.

Prosecutors allege that Comey “did willfully and knowingly make a materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statement…by falsely stating to a U.S. Senator during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that he…had not ‘authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports’ regarding an FBI investigation concerning PERSON 1.” The indictment further alleged that Comey “in fact had authorized PERSON 3 to serve as an anonymous source in news reports regarding an FBI investigation concerning PERSON 1.”

At first blush, “Person 3” was thought to be former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, who was the subject of an internal Department of Justice inquiry for his October 2016 leak to the Wall Street Journal confirming an investigation into the Clinton Foundation. (Person 1 is indeed Hillary Clinton.) DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz in 2018 determined McCabe misled investigators as to his role in authorizing the leak to the WSJ—he was attempting to save face following disclosures of his ties to Clinton allies—but McCabe was never charged, much to the permanent chagrin of President Trump and his supporters.

So, the original assumption that McCabe is “Person 3” appears to be inaccurate. Instead, the yet unidentified individual very likely is Daniel Richman, a longtime Comey crony, media source, and professor at Columbia Law School.

The Director and the ‘Professor’

Their relationship first came to light after Comey directed Richman to disclose to reporters details of a conversation between Comey and President Trump in February 2017 about the investigation into Lt. General Michael Flynn. Comey documented in the form of memos every private conversation with the president then kept copies at his home; Comey shared the memo about the Flynn discussion with Richman after the president fired Comey on May 9, 2017 and instructed Richman to share it with the New York Times.

Comey said he initiated the leak—which resulted in a bombshell May 16, 2017 Times article claiming the president had asked Comey to end the Flynn probe—to prompt the appointment of a special counsel into the Russiagate scandal. Robert Mueller was named special counsel the following day.

But that leak apparently represents only the tip of the iceberg in the Comey-Richman-media spin machine. Richman did more than simply feed the insatiable ego of his friend but acted as Comey’s stooge, successfully feeding to reporters favorable portrayals of Comey and damaging stories about President Trump and his associates.

In 2015, around the same time the DOJ opened an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server, Comey asked the FBI to hire Richman as a “special government employee” with a top secret security clearance, according to recently released documents related to a separate and now closed FBI investigation into unlawful leaks.

Records pertaining to that investigation, code-named “Arctic Haze” and initiated during Trump’s first presidency, revealed the nature of the Comey-Richman partnership. “Comey also hired Richman so Comey could discuss sensitive matters, including classified information, with someone outside of the FBI’s regular leadership,” an internal DOJ memo read. “Comey also used Richman as a liaison to the media. On several occasions, Richman spoke with the media without consultation with FBI or DOJ’s Offices of Public Affairs. Richman contacted journalists to correct stories critical of Comey, the FBI and to shape future press coverage. Richman did this both when he was an SGE and after he resigned from the FBI.”

This passage appears to substantiate the DOJ’s allegation that Comey lied to Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) during a September 2020 Senate Judiciary committee hearing. Reading back Comey’s 2017 testimony where he claimed he had never authorized anyone at the FBI to act as an anonymous source in stories about either the Trump investigation or the Clinton investigations, Cruz asked Comey if he stood by his previous statements. “So your testimony is you never authorized anyone to leak?” Cruz asked Comey. “Mine is the same today,” he responded affirmatively.

Now admittedly that exchange is a bit muddy as Cruz intertwined the McCabe leak with his line of questioning. But a plain reading of Comey’s 2017 and 2020 sworn testimony confirms he claimed he never authorized anyone to leak—and that is demonstrably false. (Richman held his special government employee status until February 2017; he kept his security clearance until July 2017.)

Other documents in the Arctic Haze probe further reveal the way in which the FBI, at Comey’s instruction, fed classified information to reporters. Richman, who was interviewed as part of the Arctic Haze inquiry, told investigators he had been a source for New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt dating back to 2008. (Schmidt is the author of numerous Russiagate articles and currently married to MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace.)

During a January 2017 meeting, Comey told Richman about “weird classified material” related to Attorney General Loretta Lynch. The pair were often at odds and Comey wanted to discredit Lynch as a way to justify his rogue handling of the Clinton investigation.

The FBI had received what was described as a “Russian intelligence document” claiming Lynch had promised a Clinton campaign associate the DOJ’s inquiry into Clinton’s email server would not go too far. A few days after that meeting with Comey, Richman discussed the Lynch matter with Schmidt. But Richman claimed Schmidt already knew about the document; when pressed by investigators, Richman oddly said “he was sure ‘with a discount’ that he did not tell Schmidt about the Classified Information.”

The allegations about Lynch were included in a lengthy NYT April 2017 puff piece on Comey, co-authored by Schmidt, entitled “Comey Tried to Shield the F.B.I. From Politics. Then He Shaped an Election.”

The article also offered behind-the-scenes details about the “Midyear Exam,” the official name for the investigation into Hillary Clinton—which meets the “Person 1” criteria in the Comey indictment.

Enter the ‘Lovebirds’

Richman, however, was not the only source for that April 2017 article. Secret lovers Peter Strzok and Lisa Page provided three “investigator-level briefings” to the Times in March and April 2017 at the behest of Comey. During one briefing, according to Arctic Haze documents, an unidentified Times reporter told the pair “they had the classified information” on Lynch. While Strzok later told investigators he did not “recall” the Times having the Lynch information, Page said she did recall that disclosure, even asking for a break from the media briefing to discuss the issue with Strzok.

Sounds like a lovers quarrel!

Which now begs the question—could a superseding indictment against Comey or separate conspiracy charges envelop Strzok and Page, the couple the president disparagingly describes as “lovebirds,” down the not too distant road? (Devin Nunes over the weekend again suggested a “grand conspiracy” case involving at least two dozen former officials could be in the works.)

If Comey did direct Strzok and Page to share classified information related to the Clinton investigation with the Times in another CYA effort to restore his tarred reputation among Democrats and Republicans alike, he most certainly lied about it under oath not once but twice.

The Arctic Haze investigation shuttered in September 2021 without charges. In a heavily redacted DOJ memo dated September 2021, an unnamed FBI agent with the counterintelligence division stated that “the investigation has not yielded sufficient evidence to criminally charge any person, including Comey or Richman, with making false statements or with the substantive offenses under investigation.”

But that also may be proven false. No one should be surprised that Comey loyalists in the bureau, not to mention officials in the Joe Biden DOJ, refused to charge a longtime nemesis of Donald Trump. At the time, the FBI and DOJ figured Trump’s political career was over and he was headed for the penitentiary.

As usual, they figured wrong.