“Judicial Watch today released new emails from the Department of Justice (DOJ) showing that former FBI Director James Comey was advised by FBI officials in May 2017 to consult with Special Counsel Robert Mueller prior to testifying before any congressional committees regarding Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and his firing as FBI director.

According to numerous news reports, Comey met directly with Mueller previous to his June 8, 2017 testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Sources said that Comey’s opening statement and subsequent testimony were coordinated with Mueller.

At the hearing, Comey revealed that he had intentionally leaked material from a memo allegedly documenting a meeting with President Trump in order to help assure the appointment of a special counsel.

I asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter. Didn’t do it myself, for a variety of reasons. But I asked him to, because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel.

The DOJ and FBI have stated that Comey’s leaks were unauthorized and compared the disclosures to Wikileaks.

The documents obtained by Judicial Watch are the first to reveal that high-ranking FBI officials helped Comey coordinate his testimony with Mueller.

• On May 17, 2017, Comey received notices to appear before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee.
• An email chain dated May 18 and 19, 2017, with the subject line “Future testimony” shows then-FBI Chief of Staff James Rybicki, then-Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe and Assistant Director Gregory Brower, Comey and others discussing Comey’s upcoming testimony:
• In this chain, on May 18 at 6:30 pm, Comey wrote to Rybicki to confirm that he had accepted the invitation to testify before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) but declined the invitations from the Senate Judiciary Committee and House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee.
• Comey also writes: “Last, would you please tell OGC [Office of the General Counsel] that I would like to be able to review any documents authored by me or on which I am copied that will be produced to SSCI in connection with my testimony and would like the opportunity for that review before I testify?”

(Read more: Judicial Watch, 5/10/2018)

Strzok’s wife Melissa Hodgman-Strzok (l) Peter Strzok (c) and Lisa Page

“Former FBI special agent Peter Strzok’s wife discovered his affair with FBI lawyer Lisa Page on his phone in 2017, the Justice Department revealed in its response to his claims he was wrongfully fired.

The department filed a 151-page motion to dismiss the wrongful termination lawsuit Strzok filed in August, with the DOJ arguing Strzok betrayed the trust placed in him as a leader at the FBI as he helped lead high-profile investigations related to Hillary Clinton’s illicit private email server and any connections between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Strzok’s affair with Page was cited in a newly public 26-page letter sent by the FBI’s Candice Will, assistant director at the Office of Professional Responsibility, to Strzok in August 2018, attached as an exhibit to the DOJ’s filing. Will recommended Strzok be demoted and suspended for 60 days without pay, but FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich overruled her. The FBI fired Strzok the next day.

Will harshly criticized, among many things, the hundreds of Strzok-Page texts showing political bias against Trump and in favor of Clinton.

(…) In a footnote, Will cited a text exchange between Strzok and Page from April 4, 2017, where Strzok’s wife uncovered their affair.

“[My wife] has my phone. Read an angry note I wrote but didn’t send you. That is her calling from my phone. She says she wants to talk to [you]. Said we were close friends nothing more,” Strzok texted Page.

“Your wife left me a vm. Am I supposed to respond?” Page replied. “She thinks we’re having an affair. Should I call and correct her understanding? Leave this to you to address?”

Strzok said, “I don’t know. I said we were close friends and nothing more. She knows I sent you flowers. I said you were having a tough week.”

Strzok’s wife threatened to expose the affair.

“You and [Page] discussed that your wife had access to your devices and had located [Page]’s husband’s full name, found a hotel reservation ostensibly used by you and [Page] during a romantic encounter, had access to photographs from your phone, threatened to send all the information to [Page]’s husband, and also threatened to hire a private investigator,” Will wrote to Strzok in 2018. “[Page] told you to determine whether your wife might use recovery software to locate other evidence of your affair on your devices.” (Read more: The Washington Examiner, 11/17/2019)  (Archive)

“The footnotes in a letter from Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson outline a series of previously unknown emails between top FBI and DOJ officials as they discuss the Steele Dossier and prepare for a release by CNN.

The emails show that hours before FBI Director James Comey briefed President-Elect Trump on the dossier, Comey’s chief-of-staff James Rybicki e-mailed staff that Director Comey “is coming into HQ briefly now for an update from the sensitive matter team.”

On January 8th, 2017, two days after the Comey briefing, former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe wrote an e-mail to top FBI officials (James Comey, James Rybicki, David Bowdich and Michael Kortan), with the subject: “Flood is coming.”

47 minutes later Andrew McCabe then emails across the street to Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and her deputy assistant Matthew Axelrod.  Andrew McCabe uses the subject line “News” in his e-mail to alert the Main Justice officials.

The letter from Senator Johnson then goes on to outline how CNN reported breaking news of the dossier on January 10th, using the ‘hook’ created by a leak of the briefing Comey gave to president-elect Trump.  CNN headlined their report: “Intel chiefs presented Trump with claims of Russian efforts to compromise him.”  A few hours later, BuzzFeed News published the contents of the “Steele dossier.”

Within the letter Senator Johnson asks Director Chris Wray to provide a list of all members of the “sensitive matters team” referenced by James Rybicki.  Additionally, Johnson requests Wray to provide all details about how FBI officials “first learned that media outlets, including CNN, may have possessed the Steele dossier.”

From the footnotes we can see the emails were first obtained by the Justice Department Office of Inspector General (Michael Horowitz) and turned over to the Senate Homeland Security Committee.

What makes this interesting is the emails are: all post-election; all seemingly unrelated to any of the three known primary IG investigative inquiries; and all provided by the OIG to congress, without prior request (that we know of).  Much like the Page/Strzok text message release, this email release seems specifically intended to spur further congressional inquiry, and broaden the general public awareness.

(Credit: Conservative Treehouse)

Why would IG Horowitz send these to congress?  Well, there’s not much he can do with them.  All of the outlined participants/recipients are no longer within the DOJ or FBI except David Bowditch (now Asst. Director under Wray); however, they do provide an expanded awareness and understanding of the post-election ‘small group‘ activity.” (Read more: Conservative Treehouse, 5/22/2018)

(…) “The lawsuit also forced the release of a November 6, 2016, email by then-FBI official Peter Strzok telling Bowdich, Priestap, Rybicki, Page, former FBI General Counsel James Baker and others: “[Redacted], Jon and I completed our review of all of the potential HRC work emails on the [Anthony Weiner] laptop. We found no previously unknown, potentially classified emails on the media.”

As Judicial Watch previously reported, there were at least 18 classified emails found on the Weiner laptop by the FBI. Paul Sperry’s RealClear Investigations report revealed that only 3,077 of the 340,000 emails “were directly reviewed for classified or incriminating information.” (Judicial Watch, 2/11/2019)

Clinton attorney David Kendall (l), enters the hearing room with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during a House hearing of the Select Committee on Benghazi, on Thursday, October 22, 2015. (Credit: Mike Sacks/The National Law Journal)

“On October 28, 2016, the day that Comey sent a letter to Congress regarding the FBI’s discovery that the Weiner laptop contained Clinton’s emails. Hillary Clinton’s personal lawyer David Kendall, within hours, email’s Baker requesting a call “ASAP” about the Comey letter. Baker describes his follow-up call to senior FBI officials:

“I received the email below from David Kendall and I called him back. Before doing so I alerted DOJ via email that I would do that.

[Redacted paragraph]

He said that our letter was “tantalizingly ambiguous” and made statements that were “inchoate and highly ominous” such that what we had done was worse than transparency because it allows people to make whatever they want out to make out of the letter to the prejudice of Secretary Clinton.

I told him that I could not respond to his requests at this time but that I would discuss it with others and get back to him.

I suggest that we have some kind of follow up meeting or phone call with this group either this evening or over the weekend to address this and probably other issues/questions that come up in the next 24 hours. Sound reasonable?”

Baker’s heads up on the Kendall call was sent to:

• Then-Director James Comey; since fired;
• Then-Associate Deputy Director David Bowdich, who later replaced Andrew McCabe as deputy director;
• Michael Steinbach, the F.B.I.’s former executive assistant director for national security;
• Then-Assistant Director of Counterintelligence E.W. Priestap, now retired;
• James Rybicki, former chief of staff to Comey;
• FBI intelligence analyst Jonathan Moffa;
• Former Acting Assistant Director Jason V. Herring;
• Michael Kortan, FBI assistant director for public affairs, now retired;
• Former principal deputy general counsel Trisha Anderson;
• Strzok and Page

The emails show that a conference call for the above senior officials was set up for the next day by Peter Strzok. (Two days before the election, on November 6, Comey sent a second letter reporting that the FBI’s review of the Weiner laptop material would not change his “conclusion” that Hillary Clinton should not be prosecuted.) (Judicial Watch, 2/11/2019)

On page 294 of the DOJ OIG report, the IG team reviews an unusual entry in EAD Randy Coleman’s notes that understandably raises eyebrows and leaves room for speculation. What does “Crime Against Children” mean in the context of Coleman’s notes? One would normally presume it would be related to Weiner sexting with the 15 year old girl. A researcher suggested they could be counting Anthony Weiner’s son as a victim and that is a possibility as well. But the plural use of the word “children” written directly below the notation of Hillary Clinton and the Foundation also implies it could mean something else. The IG team appears, somewhat, to have tried getting to the bottom of it, but Comey had a convenient case of amnesia and the other FBI officials questioned, also gave similar responses.

David Kendall, (r), sits behind Hillary Clinton during a House hearing of the Select Committee on Benghazi, on October 22, 2015. (Credit: Diego M. Radzinschi/The National Law Journal)

“Judicial Watch announced today it received 218 pages of disgraced former FBI officials Peter Strzok-Lisa Page emails which show then-FBI General Counsel James Baker instructing FBI officials to expedite the release of FBI investigative material to Hillary Clinton’s lawyer, David Kendall in August 2016. Kendall and the FBI’s top lawyer discussed specifically quickly obtaining the “302” report of the FBI/DOJ interview of Mrs. Clinton.

(…) On August 16, 2016, at 10:02 p.m. Baker emails then-Associate Deputy Director David Bowdich; Michael Steinbach, former executive assistant director for national security; former Acting Assistant Director Jason V. Herring; former FBI lawyer Lisa Page; former Principal Deputy General Counsel Trisha Anderson; Michael Kortan, FBI assistant director for public affairs, now retired; James Rybicki, former chief of staff to Comey; and others to inform them that he “just spoke” with Clinton’s lawyer Kendall, who requested documents from the FBI. Baker says he told Kendall he would “need to submit a request.” Baker tells them, “I said we would process it expeditiously.”

“I just spoke with David Kendall … I conveyed our view that in order to obtain the documents [FBI investigative material] they are seeking they need to submit a request pursuant to the Privacy Act and FOIA. I said they could submit a letter to me covering both statutes. They will send it in the morning. I said that we would process it expeditiously. David asked us to focus first on the Secretary’s 302 [FBI interview report]. I said OK. [Redacted] We will have to focus on this issue tomorrow and get the 302 out the door as soon as possible and then focus on the rest of the stuff.”

The following day, August 17, 2016, Kendall sent a FOIA/Privacy Act request on “behalf of former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton” to the FBI’s top lawyer with a request for “expeditious processing.” Baker passes this request to Bowdich, Steinbach, Herring, Page, Anderson:

In my view, we need to move as quickly as possible on this, but pursuant to David’s oral request last night, we should focus first on Secretary Clinton’s 302…. Is the end of this week out of the question for her 302?

In a follow-up email exchange, the same day, Anderson arranged for Herring, Page, former FBI Assistant Director and head of the Office of Congressional Affairs Gregory Brower, Strzok and others to “coordinate a plan for processing and releasing” Clinton’s 302, though one official reminds others that they should process the request “consistent” with other requests.

Then, in an August 21, 2016, email exchange Baker tells his people that he would “alert” Kendall shortly before Clinton’s 302 was to be posted on the FBI’s FOIA Vault webpage. On September 2, 2016, the FBI announced the release of Clinton’s interview documents.

Finally, on August 24, 2016, the acting FBI FOIA unit chief said he sees “no problem” with giving Hillary’s attorney a heads up before her records were posted to the Vault.” (Read more: Judicial Watch, 6/03/2019)