REPORT: Comey Asked AG Sessions Not To Leave Him Alone With Trump

I get it.

I’ve also been in situations where I had to ask someone not to leave me alone with some guy, because he creeped me out.

That’s something James Comey and I have in common, apparently.

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The New York Times is citing current and former law enforcement officials who have stated that after the private meeting between President Trump and Comey, where Trump allegedly asked Comey to let the investigation surrounding former national security adviser Michael Flynn, Comey went to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and told him he no longer wanted to be left alone with President Trump.

 Mr. Comey believed Mr. Sessions should protect the F.B.I. from White House influence, the officials said, and pulled him aside after a meeting in February to tell him that private interactions between the F.B.I. director and the president were inappropriate. But Mr. Sessions could not guarantee that the president would not try to talk to Mr. Comey alone again, the officials said.

Mr. Comey’s unwillingness to be alone with the president reflected how deeply Mr. Comey distrusted Mr. Trump, who Mr. Comey believed was trying to undermine the F.B.I.’s independence as it conducted a highly sensitive investigation into links between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russia, the officials said. By comparison, Mr. Comey met alone at least twice with President Obama.

So it’s not the alone part, but the who’s in the room part.

Comey supposedly kept memos of his meetings with Trump, as a way of amassing a “paper trail,” should the need arise to have such documentation.

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Some have questioned why he told next to no one about his memos, while some with knowledge of how Comey operates have said it’s because he didn’t know who he could trust within the department.

When Comey left the bureau, he left the memos in his files with the department. Special counsel Robert Mueller has access to those files. The FBI declined to comply with a recent request by the Senate Intelligence Committee to turn over the memos, citing the ongoing investigation.

The Justice Department typically walls off the White House from criminal investigations to avoid even the appearance of political meddling in law enforcement. But Mr. Trump has repeatedly injected himself in law enforcement matters, and never more dramatically than in his private meetings with Mr. Comey.

There’s a bit of a buzz now that Attorney General Sessions has offered to resign, apparently frustrated, and telling the president that he needed the freedom to do his job.

Part of that job is to draw clear lines between the president and law enforcement.

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