Report: Comey friend who shared memos in contact with Senate panel
The longtime friend who, according to former FBI Director James Comey, leaked his memos detailing his interactions with President Trump to the media has been in touch with the Senate Judiciary Committee, according to Politico.
Daniel Richman connected with the committee through the office of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, a former FBI director who's now leading the federal investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.
Richman is a professor at Columbia Law School in New York and an adviser to Comey. He previously served as chief appellate attorney in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York and served as a consultant to the Treasury and Justice Departments on federal crime matters.
Comey revealed at a hearing last Thursday before the Senate Intelligence Committee that he had asked Richman to share the contents of his memos to The New York Times. The former FBI director told the panel that after reading Mr. Trump's tweet that Comey should hope that there are no tapes of their conversations, he decided to disclose one of his memos.
"My judgment was, I needed to get that out into the public square," Comey said. "And so I asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter. Didn't do it myself, for a variety of reasons. But I asked him to, because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel. And so I asked a close friend of mine to do it."