A brand new courtroom submitting by James Comey’s attorneys definitively solutions a lingering query in regards to the legal fees towards the previous FBI director: Who’s “Particular person 3”?
The Division of Justice final month charged Comey with mendacity throughout a 2020 Senate listening to. The 2-page indictment accuses the previous FBI director of falsely telling lawmakers that he by no means gave anyone on the FBI permission to function an nameless supply in information stories in regards to the bureau’s investigation into Hillary Clinton. Nevertheless it would not identify the FBI staffer whom Comey allegedly approved to leak, referring to them solely as “Particular person 3.”
In a movement filed Monday to dismiss the costs, Comey’s attorneys wrote that final week, the federal government “confirmed to the protection that … Particular person 3 refers to Daniel Richman.”
Richman, a longtime good friend of Comey, is a Columbia College legislation professor and former federal prosecutor in New York. He served at one level as a “particular authorities worker” on the FBI when Comey led the bureau.
It is nonetheless unclear what info Richman is accused of leaking. The Justice Division has not charged Richman with a criminal offense or accused him of any wrongdoing.
Monday’s submitting — which argues Comey is the sufferer of a vindictive prosecution pushed by President Trump’s “private animus” towards him — marks the primary time that courtroom papers have named the particular person the Justice Division believes Comey approved to leak. A number of media shops had beforehand reported that Richman was “Particular person 3.”
Richman’s identify didn’t come up within the Senate testimony that led to Comey’s fees.
As a substitute, the indictment focuses on a testy back-and-forth in 2020, when Republican Sen. Ted Cruz grilled Comey about whether or not he let a special particular person — former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe — leak details about the Clinton probe to the Wall Road Journal. McCabe says he informed Comey after the article got here out that he approved the leak, and Comey permitted of it, however Comey has lengthy insisted that no such dialog happened.
Comey had beforehand informed Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley at a Senate Intelligence Committee listening to in 2017 that he by no means approved anybody to function an nameless supply in media protection on the FBI’s investigations into Clinton or Mr. Trump. Three years later, Cruz argued McCabe’s statements in regards to the Wall Road Journal leak contradicted that.
“Now, what Mr. McCabe is saying and what you testified to this committee can not each be true. One or the opposite is fake,” Cruz mentioned to Comey in 2020. “Who’s telling the reality?”
“I can solely communicate to my testimony. I stand by the testimony,” replied Comey.
In Monday’s submitting, Comey’s attorneys solid the truth that Cruz did not ask about Richman as a deadly flaw within the authorities’s case towards the ex-FBI chief, who was charged with one rely of constructing false statements to Congress and one rely of obstructing a congressional investigation.
The attorneys wrote: “the indictment omits Senator Cruz’s phrases that explicitly slender the main focus of his inquiries to Mr. McCabe and misleadingly implies that the questioning associated to Mr. Richman.”
“In different phrases, the indictment presents an inaccurate description of the testimony on the coronary heart of this case,” the courtroom submitting continued.
His attorneys additionally argue the Justice Division’s fees misquote Comey. The indictment says Comey falsely said to the Senate that he hadn’t “approved another person on the FBI to be an nameless supply in information stories” — however that precise phrase was really utilized by Cruz and Grassley, not Comey. And the submitting notes that Cruz used the phrase “Clinton administration,” not “Clinton investigation.”
The submitting says Comey is planning on asking for his false assertion rely to be dismissed “primarily based on a protection of literal fact.” It referenced the Supreme Courtroom case Bronston v. United States, which mentioned individuals who make actually true statements beneath oath aren’t responsible of perjury.
CBS Information has reached out to the Justice Division, Comey’s attorneys and Richman for remark.
What’s Daniel Richman accused of doing?
The indictment would not say what info the Justice Division believes Richman leaked to the media. It states solely that Comey “approved PERSON 3 to function an nameless supply in information stories relating to an FBI investigation regarding PERSON 1.”
Comey’s attorneys confirmed in Monday’s submitting that “Particular person 1” referred to Clinton.
The submitting factors to at least one FBI leak investigation involving Comey and Richman referred to as “Arctic Haze,” which was detailed in a memo declassified by the bureau earlier this yr. Arctic Haze sought to determine how categorized particulars on the FBI’s investigation into Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail server made their approach right into a 2017 New York Occasions article, which checked out Comey’s decision-making whereas main the politically fraught probe.
Richman was interviewed as a part of Arctic Haze, in accordance with the closely redacted memo, which was printed by the conservative-leaning web site Simply The Information. The memo says Richman informed FBI brokers he had spoken with one of many authors of the Occasions article, however he did not understand how the reporter obtained a maintain of the categorized info, and Richman mentioned he was “certain ‘with a reduction'” that he did not inform the reporter himself.
The memo describes Richman as Comey’s “liaison to the media,” but additionally notes at one level: “Richman later informed the interviewing brokers Comey by no means requested him to speak to the media.”
The Arctic Haze investigation closed with none fees. The memo mentioned the probe “has not yielded ample proof to criminally cost any particular person, together with Comey or Richman, with making false statements or with the substantive offenses beneath investigation.”
Individually, through the first Trump time period, Comey was investigated by the Justice Division’s inspector normal for giving memos about his conversations with Mr. Trump to Richman, who then supplied their contents to a Occasions reporter. The inner watchdog discovered that Comey “violated relevant insurance policies” however didn’t launch any categorized info.
Mr. Trump has accused Comey of leaks and different nefarious conduct for nearly a decade, stretching again to when he fired Comey as FBI director in 2017. The president has lengthy criticized how Comey dealt with the FBI’s probes into Clinton and the Trump marketing campaign. Comey, for his half, has referred to as Mr. Trump “morally unfit to be president.”
In Monday’s courtroom papers, Comey’s attorneys asserted that Mr. Trump’s longstanding “private spite” led to the costs towards him, which have been filed shortly earlier than the statute of limitations expired.
“No affordable prosecutor would have introduced such a poor case; the one clarification is that the President’s handpicked interim U.S. Lawyer did so to hold out the President’s needs,” they wrote in a 51-page submitting, which additionally included a 60-page attachment itemizing the entire verbal barbs flung between Comey and Mr. Trump over time.
