Susan Rice’s “note to self” email released by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday may put former FBI director James Comey in legal jeopardy because it shows he may have made “an intentional and material omission of a highly relevant fact” in his written sworn statement to the U.S. Senate last summer.
Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) obtained Rice’s email after requesting “records of meetings between President Obama and then-FBI Director Comey regarding the FBI’s investigation of allegations of collusion between associates of Mr. Trump and the Russian government.”
As PJ Media reported, former national security adviser Susan Rice wrote the email and then sent it to herself at 12:15 p.m. on January 20, 2017, just as Donald Trump was being inaugurated as president.
The email reads in part: “On January 5, following a briefing by IC leadership on Russian hacking during the 2016 presidential election, President Obama had a brief follow-on conversation with FBI Director Jim Comey and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates in the Oval Office. Vice President Biden and I were also present.”
According to legal analyst Colin Kalmbacher at Law and Crime, “Comey may have seriously misled Congress about his meetings with Obama” because he left that highly relevant confab out of his “Statement for the Record” provided to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on June 8, 2017.
The Senate Intel Committee is one of several congressional committees investigating Russian meddling and possible collusion with the Trump campaign during the 2016 general election.
“I have tried to include information that may be relevant to the committee,” Comey wrote in his statement.
Yet Comey, for some reason, neglected to include the extremely relevant January 5, 2017, meeting, which followed “a briefing by IC leadership on Russian hacking during the 2016 Presidential election” and included FBI Director James Comey, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, Vice President Joe Biden, and Rice herself, according to the email.
“Comey’s failure to disclose this meeting to the Senate committee is likely to be viewed as an intentional and material omission of a highly relevant fact related to the Russiagate investigation,” Kalmbacher wrote.
During the White house meeting, then-President Obama, according to Rice, suggested that they withhold information from the incoming Trump team — which is also legally sketchy. “President Obama said he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share info fully as it relates to Russia.”
Rice also said in her memo that Obama “stressed” his “continued commitment” to the Russia issue being handled by the intelligence and law enforcement communities “by the book.”
https://twitter.com/seanmdav/status/963144012873027585
Just two days earlier, on January 3, 2017, “outgoing Attorney General Loretta Lynch secretly signed an order directing the National Security Agency — America’s 60,000-person-strong domestic spying apparatus — to make available raw spying data to all other federal intelligence agencies, which then can pass it on to their counterparts in foreign countries and in the 50 states upon request.”
https://youtu.be/IdKgrgTf7C4
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