Comey memos: six of the biggest takeaways

Beginning in January 2017, when he first met Donald Trump, James Comey, then FBI director, carefully described each of his interactions with the new president in memos he shared with top deputies and lawyers within the agency. Comey said he wrote the memos because he thought the president might later lie about those interactions.

Seven of the memos, running as long as four pages each, were released on Thursday night on the initiative of Republicans in Congress, who have accused Comey of leaking classified information by causing some of the material to be passed to the press.

Although the memos undercut that accusation – most of them are stamped “unclassified” and others are slightly redacted – Trump publicized them with an unusual late-night tweet on Thursday claiming that they “show clearly that there was NO COLLUSION and NO OBSTRUCTION”.

Those might not be the conclusions that jump out for most readers. Here are six takeaways:

Comey’s story is consistent

Descriptions in the memos of key interactions with the president are consistent with descriptions Comey has given elsewhere, including in testimony before Congress and in his new book, A Higher Loyalty.

In one memo, Comey describes a private dinner in which Trump said “I need loyalty”. In another memo, Comey describes a private meeting in which Trump asked him to “let go” of an investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Trump has flatly denied that either scene took place. “I hardly know the man,” he said of Comey in June 2017, denying he asked for loyalty. “I’m not going to say: ‘I want you to pledge allegiance.’ Who would do that?”

In another denial, Trump tweeted in December 2017: “I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn. Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie!”

The Comey memos, which are clearly contemporaneous accounts written with the even tone and careful eye of a practiced criminal investigator, seem to lend weight to Comey’s version of events, and indicate that it is Trump who is the liar.

Trump returned constantly to the prostitutes story

In January 2017, it fell to Comey to describe to the president allegations, summarized by former British spy Christopher Steele, that Trump had been with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel room during the 2013 Miss Universe pageant. In five of the seven Comey memos, Trump discusses the allegations, which included a description of the prostitutes urinating.

Here’s how Comey describes Trump talking about the allegations:

“I said the Russians allegedly had tapes involving him and prostitutes at the presidential suite at the Ritz Carlton in Moscow from about 2013. He interjected: ‘There were no prostitutes; there were never prostitutes.’ He then said something about him being the kind of guy who didn’t need to ‘go there’ and laughed (which I understood to be communicating that he didn’t need to pay for sex) …

“At about this point, he turned to what he called the ‘golden showers thing’ and recounted much of what he had said previously on that topic … He said he thought maybe he should ask me to investigate the whole thing to prove it was a lie. I did not ask any questions. I replied that it was up to him, but that I wouldn’t want to create a narrative that we were investigating him, because we are not and I worried such a thing would be misconstrued.

“The president brought up the ‘golden showers thing’ and said it really bothered him if his wife had any doubt about it … The president said ‘the hookers thing’ is nonsense but that Putin had told him ‘we have some of the most beautiful hookers in the world’.

“He then went on at great length, explaining that he has nothing to do with Russia … was not involved with hookers in Russia (Can you imagine me, hookers? I have a beautiful wife, and it has been very painful), is bringing a personal lawsuit against Christopher Steele, always advised people to assume they were being recorded in Russia, has accounts now from those who traveled with him to Miss Universe pageant [sic] that he didn’t do anything, etc.”

Trump wanted to ‘go after the reporters’

Early in his administration, Trump was taken aback by the publication of details of phone calls he held with foreign heads of state and other leaks. The president and Comey had multiple bracing calls about the topic, according to the memos, in which Comey wants to go after the leakers and Trump suggests jailing reporters.

“I explained that the FBI gathers intelligence in part to equip the president to make decisions,” Comey writes, “and if people run around telling the press what we do, that ability will be compromised. I said I was eager to find leakers and would like to nail one to the door as a message. I said something about it being difficult and he replied that we need to go after the reporters, and referred to the fact that 10 or 15 years ago we put them in jail to find out what they knew, and it worked. He mentioned Judy Miller by name. I explained that I was a fan of pursuing leaks aggressively but that going after reporters was tricky, for legal reasons and because [Department of Justice] tends to approach it conservatively. He replied by telling me to talk to ‘Sessions’ and see what we can do about being more aggressive. I told him I would speak to the attorney general …

“The president then wrapped up our conversation by returning to the issue of finding leakers. I said something about the value of putting a head on a pike as a message. He replied by saying it may involve putting reporters in jail. ‘They spend a couple days in jail, make a new friend and they are ready to talk.’ I laughed as I walked to the door Reince Priebus had opened.”

The memos are precise

The precision of observation in the Comey memos would seem to further bolster the former FBI director’s credibility in the he-said, he-said war with Trump. Of his private dinner with Trump in the White House Green room, Comey writes: “The conversation, which was pleasant at all times, was chaotic, with topics touched, left, then returned to later, making it very difficult to recount in a linear fashion …

“At various times, he talked about the inauguration and crowd size, the campaign and his effective use of free media (‘earned media’), the extraordinary luxury of the White House (which he compared favorably to Mar-a-Lago), his many activities during the day and week, his young son’s height, the viciousness of the campaign (where I interjected about Adams and Jefferson; he said he had been given a book about it, which was upstairs), how he had not been mocking a handicapped reporter, had not assaulted any of the women who claimed he did (reviewing in detail several of the allegations), and many other things.

Trump questioned Flynn’s judgment

In a 28 January 2017 memo describing his private dinner with the president, Comey writes that Trump had deep reservations about the judgment of his national security adviser, whom Trump would remove two weeks later.

“He then went on to explain that he has serious reservations about Mike Flynn’s judgment and illustrated with a story from that day,” Comey writes. In the story, Trump tells British prime minister Theresa May that she had been the first foreign leader to call him after his inauguration, when Flynn interrupted to say that actually a different foreign leader, whose name is redacted from the memo, had called prior to May.”

Trump then “confronted” Flynn and grew “heated” that he did not know about the earlier call, Comey writes, concluding: “In telling the story, the president pointed his fingers at his head and said: ‘The guy has serious judgment issues.’”

Later, chief of staff Reince Priebus, whom the Trump administration offered as Comey’s White House liaison, asks Comey if Flynn was under surveillance. Comey replied that the direct question was not appropriate but then answered the question. The answer he gave was redacted.

Trump had mastery of the details

The president has often appeared indifferent to or incapable of mastering the details of policy. (On healthcare: “Nobody knew healthcare could be this complicated”; on North Korea: “After listening [to China’s Xi Jinping] for 10 minutes, I realized it’s not so easy.”)

But Comey, who has told interviewers he thinks Trump is of “above average intelligence”, describes a deep understanding on the part of the president of how he, Comey, had thrice taken the public stage during the election.

“He knew the sequence of events extremely well, breaking them down in his lexicon into Comey One, Comey Two and Comey Three developments, and he walked through how he saw each played out during the campaign, in great detail.”