In last week\u2019s column<\/a>, I wrote about the compulsive tendency of the power-obsessed autocrat to distrust and zealously persecute\u00a0anyone who might threaten his reign.<\/p>\n But sometimes the tyrant just picks the wrong fight, overestimates his own intelligence, and underestimates his opponent. Sometimes, the tyrant goes after the wrong man, the wrong woman, the wrong country. It is particularly interesting that at the very same time that Donald Trump has decided to go after Jim Comey with a vengeance, he has also once again opted to weigh in on the side of his sociopathic friend and invader Vladimir Putin, trying with the help of his morally compromised son-in-law Jared Kushner and his so-called negotiator Steve Witkoff to pressure and humiliate Volodymyr Zelenskyy and force the Ukrainians to accept a Russian-shaped surrender. See The New York Times\u2019 \u201cLeaked Transcript of Witkoff Call Shows U.S. Deference to Russia<\/a>.\u201d Of course, whatever these so-called dealmakers are hoping for, no matter what Putin says in public, at the end of the day, he will only be happy with an abject and defeated Ukraine. And I do not imagine that will get Donald Trump his dreamed-for Nobel Peace Prize. And despite the mounting pressure from fellow authoritarians like Xi Jinping, Viktor Orb\u00e1n and Kim Jung Un, the proud Ukrainians will continue to fight, either with our help or without it, for their liberty<\/p>\n Had Donald Trump and his collaborators any sense of irony, a smidgeon of humility, or an ability to see clearly without the haze of their own over-sized ambitions, they might learn something from what is really happening today in Ukraine. But, sadly, there is little reason for optimism on that score. Maybe someone brave enough or suicidal enough in what is left of Trump\u2019s intelligence community might clue him in to what Ukraine\u2019s new generation of drones and flamingo missiles are now doing to Moscow\u2019s oil and gas infrastructure. Perhaps they might open Trump\u2019s eyes to the devastating losses inflicted on Putin\u2019s conscripts. Yes, it took a while, but Ukraine has now brought their war home to Moscow. Finally, Russians must acknowledge and accept many of the consequences of Putin\u2019s folly. Their economy is teetering. They must accept that with every passing day, Russia is running out of the funds to pay its army. And despite his impressive ability to inhabit a world of his own wishing, I suspect in the months to come Trump will learn that he should have picked Ukraine.<\/p>\n Here at home, we can celebrate, for the moment at least, that Donald Trump has been stymied in his nonsensical attempts to punish two of his prime enemies, Jim Comey and Letitia James. On November 24, 2025, U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie ruled that both the indictment of Jim Comey<\/a> and the indictment of Letitia James<\/a> are dismissed without prejudice:<\/p>\n But there is much to be learned from the story of Donald Trump v. James Comey\u2014about vengeance and intransigence and about the determination to fight back. Let\u2019s start with why and how James Comey made it to the top of the enemies list.<\/p>\n It has probably been a while since you have heard \u201cRussia, Russia, Russia!\u201d And forgive me, but if we are really going to understand what is going on with the government\u2019s case against Comey, we are going to have to relive and rediscover some recent history. I do not know if you are familiar with Jethro Gibbs of NCIS fame, but over the many years he excelled at fighting crime, he developed some handy rules. His Rule 39 is particularly relevant here: \u201cThere is no such thing as coincidences.\u201d The more I thought about it, there is no coincidence when it comes to going after Jim Comey, the incredibly complicated relationship between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. Add to this Trump\u2019s betrayal of Ukraine and Putin\u2019s election interference on his behalf. Just history reemerging to remind us of who Donald Trump really is and how indebted and deeply compromised he is when it comes to the Russians.<\/p>\n It did not take long for Donald Trump to figure out that Jim Comey was one of those guys who was just trouble with a capital \u201cT.\u201d Comey was, after all, a straight shooter, and having worked from 1987 to 1993 as deputy chief of the Criminal Division for the Department of Justice\u2019s Southern District of New York (SDNY), he successfully prosecuted members of New York City\u2019s organized crime families. Of course, to actually build his buildings in the city, Trump had to rely upon the gang-controlled unions in the building trades to get anything done. If truth be told, I suspect he realized early on that he had more in common with the connected families whom Comey had taken down than with Comey himself.<\/p>\n As U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, Comey went after wrongdoers regardless of political party. In 1996, he was a deputy special counsel investigating Whitewater for the Senate. He prosecuted those involved in the truck bombing of U.S. Air Force personnel housed at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. Comey then returned to the SDNY until he joined the Bush administration as deputy attorney general.<\/p>\n Ironically, as Wikipedia reveals<\/a>, unlike Donald Trump who continues to illegally blast to smithereens the Venezuelan fishing boats he is convinced are carrying drugs, Comey actually helped to cripple the money-laundering scheme behind a real cartel operation with 1993\u2019s \u201cOperation Project Meltdown.\u201d<\/p>\n Then, famously, both Assistant Attorney General Comey and FBI Director Robert Mueller threatened to resign if the Bush administration continued its illegal program of secretly spying on U.S. citizens. While Attorney General John Ashcroft was in the hospital, he had designated Comey to make decisions. But in an end-around of Comey, the Bush administration sent White House Counsel Alberto Gonzalez and Chief of Staff Andrew Card to pressure Ashcroft to agree to continue the program. Luckily, Ashcroft\u2019s wife called Comey, and he and Mueller confronted Card and Gonzalez at the hospital and adamantly refused to go along with their plan.<\/p>\n Later, President Barack Obama appointed Comey to head the FBI. Which brings us to the still very controversial decision Comey made to go public with the FBI\u2019s continuing investigation of Hillary Clinton\u2019s private internet server and her possession of government emails. Comey, to the undying dislike of Democrats, chose transparency over concern that his acknowledgment might influence the 2016 presidential campaign.<\/p>\n Everything about his past life made crystal clear that Comey would be guided by his own, perhaps exceedingly stubborn, determination to do what he thought was right, despite public or private pressure. All of which made the coming calamitous collision with the extremely transactional and highly amoral 45th president of the United States, Donald John Trump, almost inevitable.<\/p>\n Now, Comey probably suspected he was about to sign on for a world of hurt on January 6, 2017, when he drew the short straw. That short straw was the decision of his fellow members of the Obama-era intelligence community to pick him to brief Donald Trump about the recent findings of the intelligence community assessment (ICA), \u201cAssessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections<\/a>\u201c:<\/p>\n Unfortunately for Comey, they had also been given the Steele Dossier. Remember, the ICA made it clear that after considerable analysis, the intelligence community believed there was no question that the Russians had intervened in a variety of ways in our presidential election:<\/p>\n As Comey wrote in his book, \u201cA Higher Loyalty<\/a>,\u201d despite his worry, he knew he had a responsibility to warn Donald Trump:<\/p>\n The material included some wild stuff. Among that stuff were unconfirmed allegations that the president-elect had been engaged in unusual sexual activities with prostitutes in Russia while on a trip to Moscow in 2013, activities that at one point involved prostitutes urinating on a hotel bed in the presidential suite of the Ritz-Carlton that the Obamas had used while on a visit there. Another allegation was that these activities were filmed by Russian intelligence for the possible purpose of blackmail against the president-elect \u2026 we believed the media were about to report on this material and therefore we had concluded it was important for the intelligence community to alert the incoming president \u2026<\/p>\n It is important to remember some of the recent history of the FBI. In so many ways, the FBI was\/is the keeper of secrets: the massive amount of information gathered from wiretaps, informers, and interviews with suspects and those who know them and detailed records of the comings and goings of them and their friends and associates. I know from my father\u2019s FBI file how much information\u2014accurate and invented\u2014the FBI can assemble. And, of course, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was renowned for using these files to his advantage, and those files are probably the reason why, despite his penchant for cross-dressing during the ultra-conservative 1950s, he managed to survive and maintain his considerable power.<\/p>\n Comey shared his recollection of that first meeting with Donald Trump during his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on June 7, 2017<\/a>:<\/p>\n Back to \u201cA Higher Loyalty,\u201d Comey clearly understands why Trump might be especially wary of what the FBI could do with the information they gathered on his past:<\/p>\n I long ago learned that people tend to assume that you act and think the way they would in a similar situation. They project their worldview onto you, even if you see the world very differently. There was a real chance that Donald Trump, politician and hardball deal-maker, would assume I was dangling the prostitute thing over him to jam him, to gain leverage \u2026 it was really going to suck \u2026<\/p>\n In fact, Comey notes:<\/p>\n We did not have a counterintelligence case file open on him. We really didn\u2019t care if he had cavorted with hookers in Moscow, so long as the Russians weren\u2019t trying to coerce him in some way \u2026 We gathered in a small conference room belonging to the Trump Organization \u2026 His suit jacket was open and his tie too long, as usual. His face appeared slightly orange, with bright white half-moons under his eyes where I assumed he placed small tanning goggles, and impressively coiffed, bright blond hair, which upon close inspection looked to be all his. I remember wondering how long it must take him in the morning to get that done \u2026<\/p>\n Director Clapper presented the intelligence community assessment \u2026 During the discussion of Russia\u2019s involvement in the election, I recall Trump listening without interrupting, and asking only one question, which was really more of a statement: \u2018But you found there was no impact on the result, right?\u2019 Clapper replied that we had done no such analysis \u2026 What we could say is that we found no evidence of alteration of the vote count \u2026 They were about to lead a country that had been attacked by a foreign adversary, yet they had no questions about what the future Russian threat might be \u2026 Instead, with the four of us still in our seats \u2026 the president-elect and his team shifted immediately into a strategy session about messaging on Russia. About how they could spin what we\u2019d just told them \u2026<\/p>\n As I was sitting there, the strangest image filled my mind. I kept pushing it away because it seemed too odd and too dramatic, but it kept coming back: I thought of New York Mafia social clubs, an image from my days as a Manhattan federal prosecutor in the 1980s and 1990s. The Ravenite. The Palma Boys. Caf\u00e9 Giardino. I couldn\u2019t shake the picture. And looking back, it wasn\u2019t as odd and dramatic as I thought it was at the time. The Italian Mafia, as noted earlier, called itself La Cosa Nostra\u2014\u2019this thing of ours\u2019\u2014and always drew a line between someone who was a \u2018friend of yours,\u2019 meaning someone outside the family, and someone who was a \u2018friend of ours,\u2019 meaning an official member of the family. I sat there thinking, Holy crap, they are trying to make each of us an \u2018amica nostra\u2019\u2014friend of ours \u2026 <\/p>\n I should have said something right then \u2026 But in that moment, I convinced myself that speaking up would be crazy \u2026 At that point, Reince Priebus asked if there was anything else that we should tell them \u2026 Clapper said, \u2018Well, yes, there is some additional sensitive material that we thought it made sense for Director Comey to review with you in a smaller group \u2026 When we were alone, the president-elect spoke first, throwing out compliments. \u2018You\u2019ve had one heck of a year,\u2019 he said, adding that I handled the email investigation \u2018honorably\u2019 and had a \u2018great reputation\u2019 \u2026 He said that the people of the FBI \u2018really like you\u2019 and expressed his hope that I would stay on as director. I replied, \u2018I intend to, sir\u2019 \u2026 I then began to summarize the allegation in the dossier that he had been with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel in 2013 and that the Russians had filmed the episode. I didn\u2019t mention one particular allegation in the dossier\u2014that he was having prostitutes urinate on each other on the very bed President Obama and the First Lady had once slept in as a way of soiling the bed. I figured that single detail was not necessary to put him on notice about the material. This whole thing was weird enough. As I spoke, I felt a strange out-of-body experience, as if I were watching myself speak to the new president about prostitutes in Russia. Before I finished, Trump interrupted sharply, with a dismissive tone. He was eager to protest that the allegations weren\u2019t true.<\/p>\n I explained that I wasn\u2019t saying the FBI believed the allegations. We simply thought it important that he know they were out there and being widely circulated \u2026 it was important that he know Russians might be saying such things. I stressed that we did not want to keep information from him, particularly given that the press was about to report it. He again strongly denied the allegations, asking\u2014rhetorically, I assumed\u2014whether he seemed like a guy who needed the services of prostitutes \u2026 He then began discussing cases where women had accused him of sexual assault, a subject I had not raised. He mentioned a number of women, and seemed to have memorized their allegations. As he began to grow more defensive and the conversation teetered toward disaster, on instinct, I pulled the tool from my bag: \u2018We are not investigating you, sir.\u2019 That seemed to quiet him. My job done, the conversation ended, we shook hands and I left the conference room \u2026<\/p>\n On January 10, four days after my meeting with Trump, the online publication BuzzFeed published in full the thirty-five-page dossier that I had briefed Trump on.<\/p>\n BuzzFeed reported<\/a>:<\/p>\n A dossier making explosive \u2014 but unverified \u2014 allegations that the Russian government has been \u2018cultivating, supporting and assisting\u2019 President-elect Donald Trump for years and gained compromising information about him has been circulating among elected officials, intelligence agents, and journalists for weeks. <\/p>\n The dossier, which is a collection of memos written over a period of months, includes specific, unverified, and potentially unverifiable allegations of contact between Trump aides and Russian operatives, and graphic claims of sexual acts documented by the Russians \u2026 <\/p>\n The document was prepared for political opponents of Trump by a person who is understood to be a former British intelligence agent. It is not just unconfirmed: It includes some clear errors.<\/p>\n Comey continues:<\/p>\n In response, the president-elect tweeted: \u2018FAKE NEWS\u2014A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!\u2019 The following day, January 11, I had another conversation with the future president \u2026 He said he was very concerned about the \u2018leaking\u2019 of the Russian \u2018dossier\u2019 and how it happened \u2026 I explained that the dossier was not a government document. It had been compiled by private parties and then given to many people, including in Congress and the press \u2026 He had been talking to people who had gone with him on the trip to Moscow for the Miss Universe 2013 pageant. He now recalled that he had not even stayed overnight in Moscow \u2026 And then he surprised me by bringing up the one allegation I had specifically tried not to discuss with him. \u2018Another reason you know this isn\u2019t true: I\u2019m a germophobe. There\u2019s no way I would let people pee on each other around me. No way.\u2019 \u2026 I stared out at the monuments and wondered what had happened to me and our country that the FBI director was talking about this with our incoming president \u2026<\/p>\n Here is how Comey described to the Senate his private dinner with the president on January 27, 2017:<\/p>\n The President began by asking me whether I wanted to stay on as FBI Director, which I found strange because he had already told me twice in earlier conversations that he hoped I would stay, and I had assured him that I intended to.<\/p>\n He said that lots of people wanted my job and, given the abuse I had taken during the previous year, he would understand if I wanted to walk away. My instincts told me that the one-on-one setting, and the pretense that this was our first discussion about my position, meant the dinner was, at least in part, an effort to have me ask for my job and create some sort of patronage relationship.<\/p>\n That concerned me greatly, given the FBI\u2019s traditionally independent status in the executive branch. I replied that I loved my work and intended to stay and serve out my ten-year term as Director. And then, because the set-up made me uneasy, I added that I was not \u2018reliable\u2019 in the way politicians use that word, but he could always count on me to tell him the truth. I added that I was not on anybody\u2019s side politically and could not be counted on in the traditional political sense, a stance I said was in his best interest as the President.<\/p>\n A few moments later, the President said, \u2018I need loyalty, I expect loyalty.\u2019 I didn\u2019t move, speak, or change my facial expression in any way during the awkward silence that followed. We simply looked at each other in silence \u2026 Near the end of our dinner, the President returned to the subject of my job, saying he was very glad I wanted to stay, adding that he had heard great things about me from Jim Mattis, Jeff Sessions, and many others. He then said, \u2018I need loyalty.\u2019 I replied, \u2018You will always get honesty from me.\u2019 He paused and then said, \u2018That\u2019s what I want, honest loyalty.\u2019 I paused, and then said, \u2018You will get that from me.\u2019 As I wrote in the memo I created immediately after the dinner, it is possible we understood the phrase \u2018honest loyalty\u2019 differently, but I decided it wouldn\u2019t be productive to push it further. The term \u2013 honest loyalty \u2013 had helped end a very awkward conversation and my explanations had made clear what he should expect.<\/p>\n During the dinner, the President returned to the salacious material I had briefed him about on January 6, and, as he had done previously, expressed his disgust for the allegations and strongly denied them. He said he was considering ordering me to investigate the alleged incident to prove it didn\u2019t happen. I replied that he should give that careful thought because it might create a narrative that we were investigating him personally, which we weren\u2019t, and because it was very difficult to prove a negative. He said he would think about it and asked me to think about it.<\/p>\n As was my practice for conversations with President Trump, I wrote a detailed memo about the dinner immediately afterwards and shared it with the senior leadership team of the FBI.<\/p>\n Comey adds in \u201cA Higher Loyalty\u201d what he understood from this conversation with the president:<\/p>\n [I] needed to protect the FBI and myself because I couldn\u2019t trust this person to tell the truth about our conversations \u2026 and I was concerned that having accurate recollections of conversations with this president might be important someday, which, sadly, turned out to be true \u2026<\/p>\n And then Comey found himself yet again having to meet with Donald Trump:<\/p>\n This time the focus was on a television interview he had given to Bill O\u2019Reilly on Fox News several days earlier \u2026 During the interview, O\u2019Reilly had pressed President Trump as to whether he \u2018respected\u2019 Russian president Vladimir Putin: \u2018I do respect him,\u2019 Trump said, \u2018but I respect a lot of people. That doesn\u2019t mean I\u2019m going to get along with him.\u2019 \u2018But he\u2019s a killer,\u2019 O\u2019Reilly said. \u2018Putin\u2019s a killer.\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018There are a lot of killers. We\u2019ve got a lot of killers,\u2019 Trump replied. \u2018What do you think? Our country\u2019s so innocent?\u2019 As I sat there, I watched the president building with his words a cocoon of alternative reality that he was busily wrapping around all of us \u2026 \u2018What am I going to do?\u2019 Trump asked no one in particular. \u2018Say I don\u2019t respect the leader of a major country I\u2019m trying to get along with?\u2019<\/p>\n Looking at me, he said, \u2018You think it was a great answer, right?\u2019 and started to move on. I jumped on it and did something I might never have done as a younger person\u2014especially to a president of the United States \u2026 but I interrupted his monologue. \u2018The first part of your answer was fine, Mr. President,\u2019 I said, as he took a breath and looked at me with a blank expression. \u2018But not the second part. We aren\u2019t the kind of killers that Putin is.\u2019<\/p>\n At that remark, Trump stopped talking altogether. In that brightly lit room, with its shiny gold curtains, a shadow seemed to cross his face. I could see something change in his eyes. A hardness, or darkness. In a blink, the eyes narrowed and his jaw tightened. He looked like someone who wasn\u2019t used to being challenged or corrected by those around him. He was the one who was supposed to be in complete control. With a small comment, I had just poured a cold dose of criticism and reality on his shameful moral equivalence between Putin\u2019s thugs and the men and women of our government \u2026<\/p>\n Still, the encounter left me shaken. I had never seen anything like it in the Oval Office<\/p>\n \u2026 At the end of the low-energy session, he signaled that the briefing was over \u2026 Then, pointing at me, he added, \u2018I just want to talk to Jim. Thanks, everybody \u2026 I want to talk about Mike Flynn,\u2019 he said. Flynn, his national security adviser, had been forced to resign the previous day \u2026 Flynn, who was a retired U.S. Army general, had spoken to the Russian ambassador to the United States multiple times during December 2016, to seek the Russians\u2019 help in derailing a United Nations resolution \u2026 and also to urge the Russians not to escalate their response to Obama administration sanctions imposed as a result of Russian interference in the 2016 election. <\/p>\n The conversations about sanctions had become the subject of intense public interest after they were reported in the media in early January and Vice President\u2013Elect Pence went on television to deny Flynn had talked about sanctions with the Russians. Pence said he knew this because he had talked to Flynn. On January 24, as part of our continuing investigation of Russian influence efforts, I dispatched two agents to the White House to interview Flynn about his conversations with the Russians. He lied to the agents, denying that he had discussed the very topics he had talked about in detail with the Russian ambassador. The president began by saying General Flynn hadn\u2019t done anything wrong in speaking with the Russians, but he had to let him go because he had misled the vice president \u2026The president then returned to the topic of Mike Flynn, saying, \u2018He is a good guy and has been through a lot \u2026 I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.\u2019 At the time, I had understood the president to be requesting that we drop any investigation of Flynn in connection with false statements about his conversations with the Russian ambassador in December. I did not understand the president to be talking about the broader investigation into Russia or possible links to his campaign. Regardless, it was very concerning, given the FBI\u2019s role as an independent investigative agency \u2026<\/p>\n [Emphasis added.]<\/p>\n Flynn though had his own agenda: an alliance with Russia to better fight Islamic extremism. The last thing he wanted was the Obama sanctions and increasing hostility between the U.S. and Russia. Here is a photo from March 2015 when Flynn was sitting next to Putin at a dinner for the Russian propaganda TV network, RT:<\/p>\n Comey continues:<\/p>\n In the car, I emailed my staff that the counterterrorism briefing they had spent so much time preparing me for had gone well, but \u2018now I have to write another memo.\u2019 What I meant was that I had another conversation with the president that I needed to document \u2026 I had now written multiple memos about encounters with Donald Trump. I knew I would need to remember these conversations both because of their content and because I knew I was dealing with a chief executive who might well lie about them. To protect the FBI, and myself, I needed a contemporaneous record \u2026<\/p>\n On March 30, Trump called me at the FBI to describe the Russia investigation as \u2018a cloud\u2019 that was impairing his ability to act on behalf of the country. He said he had nothing to do with Russia, had not been involved with hookers in Russia, and had always assumed he was being recorded when in Russia. For about the fourth time, he argued that the \u2018golden showers thing\u2019 wasn\u2019t true, asking yet again, \u2018Can you imagine me, hookers?\u2019 In an apparent play for my sympathy, he added that he has a beautiful wife and the whole thing has been very painful to her \u2026 He repeatedly told me, \u2018We need to get that fact out \u2026\u2019<\/p>\n On the morning of April 11, the president called to ask what I had done about his request that I \u2018get out\u2019 that he is not personally under investigation. In contrast to most of our other interactions, there were no compliments thrown, no cheery check-ins just to see what I was up to. He seemed irritated with me. I replied that I had passed his request to the acting deputy attorney general, but I had not heard back \u2026 I said that was the way his request should be handled. The White House counsel should contact the leadership of DOJ to make the request, which was the traditional channel. He said he would do that. Then he added, \u2018Because I have been very loyal to you, very loyal. We had that thing, you know \u2026\u2019<\/p>\n That was the last time I spoke with President Trump. We reported the call to the acting deputy attorney general. He had apparently done nothing since March 30, replying, \u2018Oh, God, I was hoping that would just go away.\u2019 It wouldn\u2019t go away.<\/p>\n Fittingly, it all finally ended in a blizzard of awful behavior. I was in Los Angeles on May 9, 2017, to attend a Diversity Agent Recruiting event \u2026 On the TV screens along the back wall I could see COMEY RESIGNS in large letters. The screens were behind my audience, but they noticed my distraction and started turning in their seats. I laughed and said, \u2018That\u2019s pretty funny. Somebody put a lot of work into that one \u2026\u2019 The FBI director travels with a communications team so he can be reached by the Justice Department or White House in seconds, any time of day or night. But nobody called. Not the attorney general. Not the deputy attorney general. Nobody. I actually had seen the attorney general the day before. Days earlier, I had met alone with the newly confirmed deputy attorney general at his request so he could ask my advice on how to do his job \u2026<\/p>\n My amazing assistant, Althea James, got the letter from the White House guy at the front door down on Pennsylvania Avenue [see here<\/a>]. \u2026 I was fired, effective immediately, by the president who had repeatedly praised me and asked me to stay, based on a recommendation from the deputy attorney general, who had praised me as a great leader, a recommendation accepted by the attorney general, who was both recused from all Russia-related matters and who, according to President Trump at our dinner, thought I was great. The reasons for that firing were lies, but the letter was real. I felt sick to my stomach and slightly dazed \u2026<\/p>\n [Emphasis added.]<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/image5-9-691x1024.jpg\"){kind=spacer}
<\/a>United States of America v. James B. Comey Jr., Sept. 25, 2025. Used under Fair Use provisions of U.S. Copyright Law. Highlighting added.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/image7-8-1024x853.jpg\")
<\/a>Chris Geidner, Nov. 24, 2025, Lawdork. Used under Fair Use provisions of U.S. Copyright Law. Highlighting added.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/image6-8-1024x923.jpg\")
<\/a>2017 Intelligence Community, \u201cAssessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections.\u201d Used under Fair Use provisions of U.S. Copyright Law. Highlighting added.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/image9-6-1021x1024.jpg\"){kind=spacer}
<\/a>2017 Intelligence Community, \u201cAssessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections.\u201d Used under Fair Use provisions of U.S. Copyright Law. Highlighting added.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/image8-6-1024x687.jpg\")
<\/a>James Comey\u2019s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, June 7, 2017. Used under Fair Use provisions of U.S. Copyright Law. Highlighting added.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/image2-13-745x1024.jpg\")
<\/a>BuzzFeed news publishes the Steele Dossier, Jan. 10, 2027. Used under Fair Use provisions of U.S. Copyright Law. Highlighting added.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/image1-16-1024x632.jpg\")
<\/a>Flynn (left, obscured) attending RT\u2019s 10th anniversary gala in December 2015. Photo used under the provision of CC by 4.0.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/image4-10-1024x798.jpg\")
<\/a>Donald Trump\u2019s May 9, 2017, letter firing James Comey. Used under Fair Use provisions of U.S. Copyright Law. Highlighting added.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/image3-12-930x1024.jpg\")
<\/a>James Comey\u2019s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Politico, June 7, 2017. Used under Fair Use provisions of U.S. Copyright Law. Highlighting added.<\/p>\n