Powerline: Jim Comey Was "Untruthful" When He Claimed In His Testimony He Took No Notes on George W. Bush

He said he hadn't taken notes about meetings with Obama or W -- just Trump.

However, Powerline's John Hindraker has found "proof" of extensive note-taking by Comey on a meeting with W.

Comey brought this episode up last week in order to paint himself, not as a sneak who dictated a memo to cover himself every time he had a conversation with a president, but rather as an honest man who was uniquely concerned about Donald Trump's trustworthiness.

...

A sharp-eyed reader pointed out that, as it happens, Comey has left behind an account of that meeting with President Bush. It is recounted in Angler, a book-length attack on Dick Cheney by Barton Gellman. Comey was one of Gellman's chief sources.

Angler includes a description of Comey’s meeting with Bush that obviously came from Comey. It is strikingly similar to Comey’s description of his critical meeting with Donald Trump in his written Intelligence Committee testimony....

In Comey's account, as transmitted by Gellman, he was a hero, telling the president something that other aides had kept from him: that the Department of Justice was in revolt over the surveillance program, and mass resignations, including his, were imminent. Comey claims to have quoted Martin Luther before the Diet of Worms, as he explained that as a man of principle he would have no choice but to resign rather than execute an order he believed to be illegal. One of Comey's colleagues, who also was about to resign, was Comey's good friend Bob Mueller, who waited for Comey downstairs at the White House while Comey had his dramatic conversation with President Bush....

But Comey’s Senate testimony was untruthful....

Comey's assertion that this "quick email" just told his staff "there was something going on" was false. The email was substantive: it documented Comey’s account of the conversation he had with the president. Comey didn’t wait five minutes to create a record of what he said to the president, and what the president said to him.

More important, he also made an extensive report on the conversation. Gellman's book is footnoted. This is where Gellman says he got his account of Comey's meeting with Bush:

317 "You don’t look well": Quotations from the Bush-Comey conversation are taken verbatim from unclassified notes describing Comey's report of the meeting shortly afterward.

Gellman's account of the conversation is two pages long and includes the following quotes attributed to Comey or Bush...

Hit the link to see how detailed these two pages are, filled with quotes, all apparently from Comey's "unclassified notes" typed up very shortly after the meeting.

When Hindraker first wrote this post, he couldn't say whose notes these were-- possibly, I guess, they were from Bush. Seems unlikely as hell -- this was an attack book about Cheney -- but it was possible.

But an update to the post includes this tweet from the book's author:

UPDATE: The same eagle-eyed reader found this tweet by Barton Gellman that nails it down:

In 2004, Comey left a 1-on-1 with Bush and sent time-stamped notes from the hallway outside the Sit Room. There will be more. From 'Angler': pic.twitter.com/y76CctRsIZ -- Barton Gellman (@bartongellman) May 17, 2017

That was from the author of the book, tweeting before his source decided to claim he never took notes on any other president.

Bring him back under oath.

Once again taking detailed notes and sending them to friendly reporters who would paint him as a hero -- and once again making sure the notes weren't classified, so they could be leaked without legal consequence.

posted by Ace at 01:04 PM

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