August 29, 2019 / by emptywheel

 

The Classified Conversation Trump Had with Comey Was Two Days after the Vault 7 Leak

The other day, I did a long post showing that Trump blabbed details about the FBI’s investigation into the theft of CIA’s hacking tools the same day that the FBI was preparing to take the first step that would alert Joshua Schulte he was FBI’s suspect, a search of his apartment. While in fact, Trump’s comments probably were broadcast after the search had commenced, he made the comments at a time when they could have tipped off Schulte.

In the post, I noted that Jim Comey had had one classified conversation about an intelligence investigation with Trump. “I had one conversation with the president that was classified where he asked about our, an ongoing intelligence investigation, it was brief and entirely professional,” Comey testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The DOJ IG Report on Comey’s memos released today (which I’ll cover at length later) reveals that that conversation took place on March 9, 2017.

On March 9, 2017, Comey had a secure one-on-one telephone call with President Trump. Comey told the OIG that the secure telephone call was “only business,” and that there was “nothing untoward” about the call, other than it was “unusual for the President to call the Director directly.” Comey said he did not prepare a memo to document this call with the President, but said he had [Jim] Rybicki arrange a secure call to Attorney General Sessions immediately afterwards to inform the Attorney General about the telephone call from the President in an effort “to keep the Attorney General in the chain of command between [Comey] and the President.”

That means the conversation took place just two days after the March 7 initial release of the Vault 7 files. The timing makes it far more likely that that’s what they two men spoke about.

More crazy, however, is the detail that Trump initiated that call.

If Trump were calling the FBI Director for information about an investigation into a leak to WikiLeaks (at a time a long effort to get Julian Assange a pardon had already begun), that would change the import of the call significantly.

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Originally Posted @ https://www.emptywheel.net/2019/08/29/the-classified-conversation-trump-had-with-comey-was-two-days-after-the-vault-7-leak/