Comey Dismisses GOP Report Finding No Collusion With Russia

On Sunday talk shows former FBI Director James Comey completely dismissed and derided the Republicans’ House Intelligence Committee report that said there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Comey said Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press that he considers the report, issued Friday by Republicans, to be a “political document.”  He expressed his opinion that “the most important investigation is being done by special counsel Robert Mueller.”

He said the Committee’s report was “a wreck,” and was “merely political and self-harming.”

“It wrecked the committee, and it damaged relationships with the [U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court], the intelligence communities,” he told NBC’s Chuck Todd of the GOP document. “It’s just a wreck.”

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Comey, led the Russia investigation into collusion with Trump before he was fired by Trump in May of 2017.  And he made clear that the report by the House committee does not match what he knew before he was relieved of his FBI position.

“That is not my understanding of what the facts were before I left the FBI, and I think the most important piece of work is the one the special counsel’s doing now,” Comey said.

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), who is a member of the House Intelligence Committee, disagreed with Comey’s “wreck” description of the GOP report, but admitted it had serious limitations.

On the CBS show “Face the Nation” Gowdy said that the House committee’s investigation was not as comprehensive as the probe being conducted by the special counsel’s team.

“The witnesses we talked to ― no one said that they had any evidence of collusion,” Gowdy said.  “Executive branch investigations are just better than congressional ones” because “they get to use a grand jury” and have “investigative tools that we don’t have.”

“So we found no evidence of collusion,” he said. “Whether or not it exists or not, I can’t speak to because I haven’t interviewed the full panoply of witnesses.”

The news here is that Gowdy, a leader of Congressional Republicans, is admitting that the Mueller investigation may lead to findings of collusion.

Comey also said Sunday that he has a strong distrust of Trump, and he has “serious doubts” about the president’s credibility.

“I was concerned about the nature of his commitment to truth-telling, based on some of the things I’d seen during the campaign,” he said.  He also said he was disturbed by Trump’s apparent lack of any concern about protecting the country as his top duty.

Comey, in his new book, “A Higher Loyalty,” described Trump as “unethical and untethered to the truth.”

Leo Vidal

I am a lifelong Democrat with a passion for social justice and progressive issues. I have degrees in writing, economics and law from the University of Iowa.