According to Catherine Herridge at Fox News, a new unredacted House Intel report shows that Comey testified that he didn’t believe Michael Flynn actually lied to the FBI.
Here’s the lowdown:
FOX NEWS – Former FBI Director James Comey testified to the House Intelligence Committee that FBI agents did not believe that Michael Flynn, who was national security adviser, intentionally lied about talks with Russia’s ambassador, according to a newly unredacted report from the committee.
“Director Comey testified to the Committee that ‘the agents…discerned no physical indications of deception,” said a new version of the report obtained by Fox News on Friday. “They didn’t see any change in posture, in tone, in inflection, in eye contact. They saw nothing that indicated to them that he knew he was lying to them.’”
But Flynn later pleaded guilty plea in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of alleged Russian election meddling to making false statements to the FBI. He also lost his White House job over the Russia contacts controversy.
Fox News on Friday asked the special counsel’s office for comment, and about whether it had uncovered new evidence against Flynn. There had been no response by the time of publication. Fox News will update the reporting if a response becomes available.
Comey, who has been on tour promoting his new book, has suggested his testimony about Flynn had been misunderstood.
“No, I saw that in the media,” Comey said last week on Fox News’ “Special Report.” “Someone misunderstood something I said. I didn’t believe that and didn’t say that.”
But the House report also states that then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe said FBI didn’t “detect deception” from Flynn in the interview.
“Deputy Director McCabe confirmed the interviewing agent’s initial impression and stated that the ‘conundrum that we faced on their return from the interview is that although [the agents] didn’t detect deception in the statements that he made in the interview … the statements were inconsistent with our understanding of the conversation that he had actually had with the ambassador,’” the report states.
McCabe then acknowledged that “the two people who interviewed [Flynn] didn’t think he was lying, [which] was not [a] great beginning of a false statement case.”
Last December something similar was reported by Bret Baier, who at the time said he had a source with “knowledge of FBI Director Comey’s testimony to Congress” who stated “that his agents felt that Flynn hadn’t deliberately mislead them, but that he was somehow mistaken in his conversations.”
Now Comey is suggesting that the committee didn’t understand him or something? But the House Intel report says McCabe basically said the same thing, so something doesn’t smell right. Is the committee lying, or is Comey?
Here’s a link to the newly unredacted report that Fox News linked to in their article, if you want to peruse it yourself.