President Trump woke in a feisty mode on Friday, firing out an angry tweet just a day after former FBI director James Comey’s confidential memos were leaked.
Trump said his former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn’s life has been “totally destroyed” while “shadey” Comey can “Leak and Lie” and make “lots of money from a third rate book.”
Comey is on a TV and talk tour to sell his book, “A Higher Loyalty.”
Flynn pled guilty last December to charges of making false statements to the FBI. Those statements involved his communications with Russia as part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Flynn was fired on Feb. 13, 2017, “after White House officials said he had misled them about his Russian contacts during the transition period by saying that he had not discussed sanctions,” the Associated Press reported.
The following day, according to a separate memo, Comey says Trump cleared the Oval Office of other officials, encouraged him to let go of the investigation into Flynn and called him a good guy. Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and is now cooperating with Mueller’s investigation.
The memos reveal that days before Flynn’s firing, then-White House chief of staff Reince Priebus asked Comey if Flynn’s communications were being monitored under a secret surveillance warrant.
“Do you have a FISA order on Mike Flynn?” Priebus asked Comey, according to the memos, referring to an order under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Comey said he “paused for a few seconds and then said that I would answer here, but that this illustrated the kind of question that had to be asked and answered through established channels.”
Comey’s response is redacted on the unclassified memos.
Trump also fired out a fiery tweet at midnight, accusing Comey of leaking classified information.