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

Former FBI Director James Comey’s redacted memos released Thursday detailing his early conversations with President Donald Trump show that Comey “was dishonest with the president from the very beginning and continues to be” to this day, Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah) said Thursday on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle.”

The Department of Justice turned over redacted versions of Comey’s memos to Congress Thursday. The memos recorded seven conversations between Trump and Comey ranging from before Trump’s January 2017 inauguration through April 11, 2017. Although four of the partially redacted memos are classified, the other three are unclassified.

Stewart (above, second from left), a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, noted that “one of the great frustrations” congressional committees have had “for months now” is the Department of Justice’s and FBI’s refusal to turn over documents both requested and subpoenaed regarding the Trump-Russia investigation and probes pertaining to 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Stewart said that the only way the DOJ and FBI could protect the U.S. is to “be honest with American citizens.”

“The Justice Department and FBI have obstructed at every turn as we’ve requested — how many times have we had to threaten subpoena or [have] subpoenaed?” Stewart told host Laura Ingraham. “This is another good example of information that should have been released the first time we asked.”

“Why in the world does the Department of Justice feel like it’s their responsibility to protect [Comey], rather than their responsibility would be — to be open and honest with the American people?” Stewart added.

Comey wrote in his memos that Trump “needed loyalty and expected loyalty” from him. The former FBI director, whom Trump fired in May 2017, told the president that “he would always get honesty from me,” including “honest loyalty.”

Comey wrote that Trump “thought maybe he should ask me to investigate” the salacious and unverified allegations raised in the anti-Trump dossier, compiled by Christopher Steele and funded by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC), “to prove [the dossier] was a lie.”

“I reminded [Trump] that I had told him we weren’t investigating him and that I had told the Congressional leadership the same thing,” Comey wrote in his memo. “[Trump] said it would be great if that could get out and several times asked me to find a way to get that out.”

Stewart said that Comey’s memos show him “that Director Comey was dishonest with the president from the very beginning and continues to be.”

“[Comey] should have gone in and said, ‘Mr. President, we have this piece of political garbage that was funded by the DNC, it was funded by Hillary Clinton. Pay no attention to it, and if anyone brings it up, we’ll refute it. We’ll say it’s not credible,'” Stewart said.

“Instead, what he said to the president is, ‘The Russians are reporting’ [on the dossier] as if this was [a] credible Russian intelligence operation when he knew that it wasn’t,” Stewart added. “[Comey] knew that this wasn’t some formal document that Russia intelligence had created and put together.

“[Comey] should have been honest with the president,” Stewart continued. “And by the way, he’s being dishonest with the president [still]. He says that he thinks it’s possible that the president is under some type of shadow, that the Russians have some information.”

Related: Comey Claims Nobody Asked About Clinton Obstruction Before Today

Comey has been asked about his dealings with Trump extensively during his press tour over the past several days, touting his book, “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership.”

“The testimony that the director has provided before the committee and in closed sessions does not comport at all with some of the things that he’s saying publicly right now,” Stewart observed. “This is not about his book. This is about learning the truth and having him be accountable for some of the things that he has said.”

Solomon Wisenberg (above, second from right), former deputy independent counsel for Kenneth Starr’s Whitewater-Lewinsky investigation of former President Bill Clinton, told Ingraham that “there is no underlying crime for the president reflected in [Comey’s memos] at all.”

“Certainly nothing approaching obstruction of justice. As is so often the case with President Trump, there is not an understanding of norms, norms that have evolved in how you deal with the FBI and how you interact with somebody like the FBI director,” Wisenberg said. “But there’s nothing close to an obstruction of justice.”

Wisenberg noted that he shares Stewart’s concern over Comey’s lack of forthrightness when it came to the dossier in his conversations with Trump.

“If Director Comey knew at the time of this initial meeting, where he was alone with the president and briefed him on the salacious Russia allegations, if he knew by that point in time, which I believe he did, who paid for these, that it was the DNC and Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, I think it is extremely disappointing that he didn’t reveal that to the president,” Wisenberg said. “I think he definitely should have done so.”

Retired FBI Special Agent Bobby Chacon (above, far right) told Ingraham that Comey went into his early meetings with Trump with the intention of “immediately going and creating these memos, which he already told us that he never had to do under President Obama.”

“And it really sets up — his mindset was that President Trump was an adversary right from the beginning. Before they even had a relationship, he’s treating the president of the United States as his adversary,” Chacon said.

Victor Davis Hanson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, told Ingraham that the American people “were looking for two things” in the memos that Comey asked a friend of his to leak to the press.

“We were looking for two things in them — collusion and obstruction of justice. It’s not there,” Hanson said.

Wisenberg noted that Comey’s memos “clearly” were not “his personal notes.”

“They were on a government computer. He’s writing them to people who are professionals with him in the FBI,” Wisenberg said. “And whether it is classified or unclassified, it’s government property, and he doesn’t have the right to send them out anywhere without getting permission from the proper authority.”

Stewart said that all the American people are asking for is that Comey and other key officials “be treated just like I would have been treated if I had been responsible for either leaking or disseminating information that was classified.”

Also on the panel was Scott Golden (picture above, far left), a Democratic lawyer and regular guest on Ingraham’s show.

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