Some details are coming out about the testimony that Comey gave to Congress, and it’s very very interesting.
Like for instance, the fact that the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation began with looking into FOUR different U.S. citizens, not including Trump.
From the Hill:
Former FBI director James Comey testified to House lawmakers this week that the counterintelligence investigation into possible conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign began by examining four Americans.
While Comey steadfastly denied the probe was focused on a political campaign and declined to identify who the four individuals are, he did note President Trump was not among them.
“I was briefed sometime at the end of July that the FBI had opened counterintelligence investigations of four individuals to see if there was a connection between those — any of those four and the Russian effort,” Comey said Friday during a closed-door questioning, according to a transcript of the interview released Saturday. “And those four Americans did not include the candidate.”
I think we can safely presume that Carter Page was one of those persons. Who were the other three? Maybe Manafort? Flynn? Gates? ME?!?!
Comey also defends Strzok by arguing that IF he was so anti-Trump, he could have easily leaked out that four members of the campaign were being investigated before the election, and damaged his campaign. But he didn’t.
More from the Hill:
In particular, Comey went to bat for former counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok, who was fired earlier this year for sending disparaging text messages about the president while he worked on two key FBI investigations during the 2016 presidential election.
He said he saw no evidence of bias in Strzok’s work on the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified materials while secretary of State.
Still, he said that if he had known about some of the now surfaced texts that Strzok had sent to Lisa Page — a former FBI lawyer he was having an affair with at the time — he would have removed the agent for even giving the appearance of bias against Trump.
Very interesting.
You can read the entire giant text of the testimony here.
And some Republicans are already slapping him down:
Aaaand a Fox News reporter: