JONATHAN TURLEY IN THE HILL: Whistleblower or wrongdoer? White House correct on Comey violations.

This week’s press conference has caused a media frenzy after White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders suggested that former FBI director James Comey committed federal violations in his leaking of memos related to the Russia investigation. The press and various politicians were aghast at the very suggestion that Comey could have violated the law. As I have previously observed, it is a serious mistake for the president and his staff continue these ad hoc comments about the investigation and its key figures. However, Comey has taken on an inviolate image in the media that ignores glaring questions over his own misconduct, an important story that has been largely ignored in most of the coverage.

At the heart of the alleged violations are a series of “memos to file” about Comey’s meetings with President Trump. Comey now admits that he gave at least one of the memos to a friend to leak the information to the media. He insists that he was merely trying to disclose material information to the public. However, when he was fired, it was clear that Comey would be asked to speak to congressional investigators in addition to FBI investigators. Moreover, many of us were already calling for the appointment of a special counsel, which seemed all but certain. In other words, Comey knew that both congressional and federal investigators would be obtaining the memos in short order.

There was, however, an obvious personal benefit to releasing the information. Before he was fired, both Democratic and Republican leaders, as well as former FBI officials, denounced Comey’s prior conduct as director. In addition, Rod Rosenstein, the respected and nonpartisan deputy attorney general, had already concluded that Comey should be fired due to his record at the FBI. That is not the narrative that Comey relished after being fired by President Trump. So he changed the narrative.

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