There are two things which Donald Trump must do if he is to gain any degree of credibility–give up watching Fox and Tweeting every idiotic thing which comes into his head. (Okay, he probably needs to do even more than that, but it would be a start). It looks like Trump made a false charge against Comey based upon a misleading story he saw on Fox.
Philip Bump explained in greater detail, but the gist is that Comey gave a memo of a meeting with Trump to a friend. Comey also wrote memos on his meetings which contained classified information. Fox, and then Trump, then claimed that Comey broke the law by giving his friend a memo with classified information. However, the memo which Comey gave to the friend was not one of the memos which contained classified information. Comey had written a total of seven memos after nine meetings with Trump. Four of the seven memos are marked as secret or classified. This did not include the memo which Comey gave to the friend.
Jake Tapper has a report further showing that Trump’s attack was untrue:
The Columbia University Law School professor and confidant of former FBI Director James Comey refuted a charge by President Donald Trump and his advocates in the media Monday: that Comey shared classified information with journalists.
Daniel Richman, with whom Comey shared at least one memo — the contents of which Richman shared with New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt — said President Trump was simply wrong.
“No memo was given to me that was marked ‘classified,'” Daniel Richman told CNN. “No memo was passed on to the Times.”
Richman did share the contents of one memo, he said, but “the substance of the memo passed on to the Times was not marked classified and to my knowledge remains unclassified.”
Trump needs to learn that the claims made on Fox are often fictitious pieces of propaganda, and not things he should repeat or base his claims on. He certainly should not attempt to govern based upon what he hears on Fox.
