False statement charge against Comey appears to center on Hillary Clinton email probe

[Thiệu Ngô]

The alleged leak to the media that underpins the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey appears to relate to the 2016 investigation concerning Hillary Clinton, rather than the separate 2016 FBI investigation of Donald Trump and Russian election meddling.

By Evan Perez, Katelyn Polantz , Kaitlan Collins, Jeremy Herb


Prosecutors say in the indictment they believe Comey had authorized an anonymous leak to the press about an FBI investigation. The indictment then accuses him of lying under oath to the Senate in 2020 when he was asked whether he had authorized a leak, and he testified he hadn’t.

The indictment doesn’t identify which specific leaked details or news reports form the core of the case.

But officials and people involved in the case tell CNN the false statement charge appears to center on alleged leaks for news articles about the FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton and her use of a private email server.

For Trump, Comey’s handling of the investigation into him and his campaign has been at the top of the agenda. He has accused Comey of being corrupt and of damaging his first term by leaking against him. That the two counts Comey faces may be instead about alleged leaks related to the Clinton investigation represents the irony of the latest developments. Clinton has long accused Comey of damaging her campaign and swinging the election to Trump.

Who are Persons 1, 2 and 3?

The indictment says Comey lied when he said he “had not ‘authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports’ regarding an FBI investigation concerning Person 1.”

The unidentified Person 1 is Clinton, according to officials and people briefed on the matter.

In another court filing in the case documenting a charge against Comey that the grand jury didn’t approve, “Person 1” is referenced again. In that document, “Person 1” is more clearly a reference to Clinton and her “approval of a plan concerning Person 2,” who is Trump.

More details about the leak and the alleged false statement could come out in court in subsequent proceedings, especially during a trial.

For instance, the person Comey allegedly authorized to leak about an FBI investigation is only called “Person 3” in the court documents.

A source familiar with the indictment tells CNN’s Jake Tapper that “Person 3,” the FBI individual whom Comey allegedly authorized to leak information on his behalf, is his longtime friend and Columbia Law School professor Daniel Richman.

Sources familiar with the investigation and indications from the public record point to unnamed “Person 3” in the indictment being Richman, who was at one point during Comey’s tenure a special government employee at the FBI.

After Comey was fired from the FBI in May 2017, he provided memos detailing his interactions with Trump to Richman, who leaked them. Comey testified in June 2017 that he gave Richman the memos in an attempt to get a special counsel appointed following his firing.

But the leak of those memos, which contained classified information, don’t appear related to Thursday’s indictment, which is focused on the Clinton investigation, and not the Trump probe.

Richman recently came in for an interview with the FBI and was given a subpoena, sources said.

Richman is not accused of any wrongdoing in the Comey indictment.

The possibility remains that Person 3 could have been former deputy FBI Director Andy McCabe, who is now a CNN contributor.

In Comey’s testimony cited in the indictment, Sen. Ted Cruz specifically asks Comey about statements from McCabe that the Texas Republican said contradicted Comey’s prior testimony. Comey responded he stood by his testimony.

But several sources said that while Cruz’s question referenced McCabe, Person 3 appeared to be Richman.

Richman’s lawyer declined to comment. The US attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia, which is prosecuting the matter, also declined to comment.

‘Arctic Haze’ investigation

It’s not yet clear what specific news stories contained the information Comey is accused of authorizing to be leaked.

The FBI previously investigated during Trump’s first term the disclosure of classified information in four news stories from 2017, which was codenamed “Arctic Haze.” Several of the stories in question were about Comey’s handling of the Clinton investigation.

According to FBI documents declassified and turned over to Congress last month, Richman told investigators he spoke with a New York Times reporter about classified information in January 2017, though Richman said the reporter knew more about the information than he did.

“Richman was pretty sure he did not confirm the Classified Information. However, Richman told the interviewing agents he was sure ‘with a discount,’” Richman told FBI investigators in November 2019.

But at the same time, Richman told investigators that “Comey never asked him to talk to the media.”

The declassified FBI files state that Comey “used Richman as a liaison to the media,” to correct stories critical of Comey, though the documents do not state he authorized Richman specifically to discuss the Clinton investigation with reporters.

Comey under scrutiny for a decade

For nearly a decade, Comey has been under intense political scrutiny and multiple investigations for his handling of the two 2016 investigations, one around Clinton, and the other around Trump, both of which played a role in the presidential campaign that year.

Trump’s allies — both in political appointments in his administration and in the Republican Party on Capitol Hill — have voiced their anger toward Comey’s oversight of the FBI as it worked on the Russia investigation.

They have expressed far less concern with his announcement late in the 2016 campaign about the FBI re-opening the Clinton email server investigation because of material found on Anthony Weiner’s laptop. Clinton was never charged, but Democrats say that Comey’s announcement and the distrust it sowed among voters was a factor in her losing the 2016 election to Trump.

Even in a statement announcing the indictment of Comey on Thursday, the current FBI Director Kash Patel smacked his agency again for the investigation it conducted around Trump in 2016.