Okay, I'm officially very confused about the Comey memos. Of all people, Andy McCarthy partially defends Comey.
Quote:
First, no one is better suited than Barr to weigh the pros and cons of prosecuting alleged government misconduct. He has prioritized the importance of resisting the politicization of law enforcement and he grasps the stakes involved. He is also a big enough boy to tune out the noise from the TrumpComey feud: the president's nonstop depiction of Comey as the reincarnation of Lavrentiy Beria, and the former director's worn-thin moralizing about how "Trump eats your soul in small bites" including Barr's own. The attorney general is not going to authorize a prosecution in the absence of clear evidence of a serious crime.
Second, I do not believe that Jim Comey would willfully leak classified information. Unless and until someone can show me he did it, I am going to continue assuming he did not.
Quote:
That said, the classified-information facet of this episode has been exaggerated. There were seven memos in all, totaling 15 pages. Our understanding is that Comey tried to avoid putting classified information in them, and believed he had succeeded. Yet after obtaining and accounting for all of them, the FBI designated two of them as "confidential," the lowest level of classification. We do not know at this point (or, at least, I don't know) whether the memo leaked to the Times regarding the February 2017 TrumpComey discussion of the investigation of former national-security adviser Michael Flynn was one of the classified ones.
But we can easily deduce that Comey neither intended it to be classified nor thought it was. At one point in the memo, Comey wrote, "NOTE: Because this is an unclassified document, I will be limited in how I describe what I said next."
LINKSooo, if Comey was too smart to put classified info in the memos he leaked, why is DOJ arguing in court yesterday that the memos contain sources and methods and thus cannot be made public?
Quote:
The DOJ has filed a response motion requesting a reversal of a prior court order that would have forced unredacted release of the "David Archey Delcarations"; detailed descriptions of the James Comey memos. Detailed Backstory
In their latest filing (full pdf below) the DOJ and FBI are falling back on the familiar "sources and methods" justification to block DC Circuit Court Judge Boasberg's earlier ruling.
Quote:
Within that courtroom fight Mueller's lead FBI agent David Archey wrote a series of declarations to the court describing the content of the memos and arguing why they should be kept classified.
The FOIA fight shifted; and the plaintiff, CNN, argued for public release of the content of the FBI agent's descriptions, now known as the "Archey Declarations".
After a lengthy back-and-forth legal contest, on June 7th Judge James E Boasberg agreed to allow the FBI to keep the Comey memo content hidden, but instructed the DOJ/FBI to release the content of the Archey Declarations. The DOJ is seeking to reverse that order.
LINKI understand Andy's quibbling about exactly what was and wasn't leaked from the memos being classified. But still his handling of them, removing them to his home is still a crime. As the author who put in sources and methods, he knew damn well they should have been classified, even if he, as the Director of the FBI, didn't officially designate them as such.
Barr has declass authority yet his DOJ is doing cartwheels in court to keep the Comey memos out of the public domain but not because of harm to an on-going matters* but on the classified nature of the sources and methods.
*I'd feel better if the announced reason was harm to ongoing matters as it would reinforce that Comey is not out of the woods (pun intended) yet.
