Ben Wittes and Lawfareblog received FOIA documents which confirm that the WH was fabricating reasons for Comey’s firing.
It makes the WH/GOP need to attack the FBI’s actions in #TrumpRussia ring even more hollow.
Huckabee Sanders claimed that FBI agents were “thankful” for the Comey firing.
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The bottom line is that the documents tell a remarkably consistent story about the reaction inside the FBI to Comey’s firing, and it is not the story the White House has told about an agency in turmoil.
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It’s very much the story, rather, that McCabe told the Senate a few days after Comey’s dismissal.
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Someone, the documents show, stood before the American people the week of the firing and told the truth about the FBI.
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It just wasn’t Sarah Huckabee Sanders or Donald Trump.
Trump himself blasted Comey too, stating in an interview that the former director was "a showboat. He's a grandstander" and that the FBI "has been in turmoil. You know that, I know that, everybody knows that. You take a look at the FBI a year ago, it was in virtual turmoil—less than a year ago. It hasn't recovered from that." A few days later, the New York Times reported that Trump had told Russian officials visiting him in the Oval Office the day after Comey’s firing that Comey was a “nut job.”
Over the next few days, a wealth of evidence emerged to suggest that Trump and Sanders were playing fast and loose with the truth. But we now have the documents to prove that decisively.
Their disclosure was not a leak but an authorized action by the FBI, which released to us under the Freedom of Information Act more than 100 pages of leadership communications to staff dealing with the firing. This material tells a dramatic story about the FBI’s reaction to the Comey firing—but it is neither a story of gratitude to the president nor a story of an organization in turmoil relieved by a much-needed leadership transition.
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On June 22, 2017, Wittes made four FOIA requests. One of them sought communications to the workforce from the senior FBI leadership regarding Comey’s firing. Another sought communications on the topic from all the assistant directors and special agents in charge at the FBI’s many components and field offices to their respective teams.
When the FBI did not respond in a timely manner, Wittes sued—represented by the folks at Protect Democracy—stating that his purpose was “to show conclusively that President Trump and his White House staff are lying about career federal law enforcement officers, their actions, and their attitudes”:
Week 55: Evidence that Trump and his press secretary lied about FBI communications on James Comey’s firing; deriding Democrats as “un-American” and “treasonous” for their response to the State of the Union; smearing two former US intelligence chiefs and accusing a congressman of a federal crime without evidence (Feb. 3 – Feb. 9)