WASHINGTON (AP) – James Comey and President Donald Trump seem to disagree on most everything, but the ex-FBI director’s memos show consensus on at least one thing: the need to hunt down leakers.
The two men bonded over the idea of a proposed leak crackdown, even sharing a chuckle over a crude joke involving jailed journalists, according to memos written by Comey and obtained by The Associated Press.
The jocularity over leakers and journalists is striking given the otherwise tense nature of their conversations, which touched on loyalty pledges, Russian prostitutes and open FBI investigations.
The memos kept by Comey show his unease with Trump’s requests and his concern that the president was blurring the bright line between politics and law enforcement, including with a request that he end an investigation into former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn.
A sign of the ongoing tension between the two was a Friday night tweet from Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in south Florida which appears to be aimed at undermining Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation by suggesting it was prompted by “illegally leaked” memos. Trump tweeted that Comey “illegally leaked classified documents to the press in order to generate a Special Council?”