Rep. Jim Jordan Insists ‘No One on Capitol Hill’ Believes Comey Leaked Only Once

Speaking on “The Ingraham Angle” on Fox News Thursday night, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) could not have been clearer: “No one on Capitol Hill” believes James Comey leaked sensitive information only once to the same friend — meaning the friend who told journalists about memos the former FBI director wrote about his talks with President Donald Trump.

Trump rebuked Comey during an interview Thursday on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” for leaking classified information in the memos to his friend, Columbia University law professor Daniel Richman.

Richman, who now serves as part of Comey’s legal team, held an unpaid “special government employee” (SGE) status with the FBI under Comey’s tenure. When Fox News’ Bret Baier asked Comey to respond on the show “Special Report” to Trump’s charges, Comey denied leaking classified information at all.

“No one on Capitol Hill believes this was the only leak Jim Comey did through Daniel Richman,” Jordan (above, third from left) told “The Ingraham Angle” host Laura Ingraham. “My guess is there were tons of them. That’s why he had that special government employee status.”

But Comey refuted Trump’s claim and denied leaking any classified information through Richman.

“[Trump’s] just wrong. Facts really do matter,” Comey told Baier. “Which is why I’m on your show, to answer your questions. That memo was unclassified then, it’s still unclassified.”

Fox News contributor and Washington Examiner columnist Byron York noted that Comey has “redefined” what it means to leak. Democratic strategist Richard Goodstein (pictured above, on the far left) was the third member of the panel.

“Comey does not consider what he did leaking. He has redefined leaking to mean only disclosing classified information,” York (above, second from left) said. “He believes — he has said several times — that he did not leak when he gave this memo to Dan Richman for the purpose of Richman then telling The New York Times about it.”

“Comey maintains that this was not a leak. He also said it couldn’t have been a leak because he left the FBI, was no longer a government employee,” York continued. “Up until last week, the Justice Department kept those Comey memos as if they were state secrets, few members of Congress allowed to see them, had to have a FBI minder with them, no notes, no copies.”

York’s comment prompted Goodstein to note that “George Stephanopoulos wrote a book about conversations with Bill Clinton. Scott McClellan wrote a book about conversations with George W. Bush. Nobody suggested that those were illegal …”

But Ingraham pointed out that Stephanopoulos and McClellan wrote their books “after they were out of office,” while Comey’s memos were written while he was FBI director.

Comey’s partially redacted memos, which were released last week, contained some classified information.

When Baier asked Comey if he saw the “disparity” between how the FBI’s investigation into Trump and the bureau’s investigation into former 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s private email server were handled, Comey denied seeing any such disparity.

“Well, there is a disparity and the American people see it. The president is not wrong. He’s not making things up,” Jordan said. “He’s not making up the fact that they called up Cheryl Mills and said, “Hey Cheryl, what time can we come over and you hand over the emails you want us to have?'”

Mills, a subject of the investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server while serving as secretary of state, served as Clinton’s lawyer and her chief of staff.

Jordan also pointed to the anti-Trump and pro-Clinton text messages exchanged between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. The two were involved in the investigations into both Clinton and Trump in 2016 and 2017.

“It wasn’t bias — it was animus toward the president. And Peter Strzok isn’t any old person who is criticizing the president. [He was] the deputy head of counterintelligence,” Jordan said. “And you know what? He’s been demoted and reassigned for his behavior.”

York also was stunned when Comey told Baier that he believed the anti-Trump dossier written by former British spy Christopher Steele and alleging collusion with Russia was funded by Republicans. When Baier asked Comey about when he first learned that the dossier had been funded by the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Comey replied, “I still don’t know that for a fact.”

“I’ve read that in the media but I don’t know that for a fact and didn’t know while I was at the FBI which exact opponent of the president funded that,” Comey said. “I’ve only seen it in the media. I never knew exactly which Democrats funded … My understanding was his work started funded as oppo [opposition] research funded by Republicans.”

Related: Stewart: Memos Show Comey Was ‘Dishonest’ from ‘the Very Beginning’

When asked if he wanted to know who funded the dossier in particular, Comey replied, “I wanted to know what I knew, which was that it was funded by people politically opposed to Donald Trump — which particular opponents wasn’t that important here.”

“This was a stunning moment,” York said. “I mean, [Comey] showed apparent ignorance of the basic facts of the dossier, which has become one of the most important documents” in the Trump-Russia collusion narrative.

“[Comey] also seemed to repeat a kind of left-wing talking point that it began with Republicans. We know … that the Fusion GPS research into Trump’s business life began with Republicans. They quit that. And then the Steele dossier was funded — all of it — by Democrats,” York continued.

Jordan also rejected Comey’s attempt to downplay the dossier’s importance in the FBI’s surveillance warrant renewal requests to spy on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Jordan claimed that the FBI officials “led with” the dossier in their Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) requests.

“When you lead with it, that’s your primary evidence that you’re taking to court,” Jordan said, noting that the FBI officials “didn’t tell the court who paid for it — namely the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign.”

PoliZette writer Kathryn Blackhurst can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter.