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Ben Wittes: "I got more than 100 pages of internal FBI correspondence from week of Comey firing"
Last edited Mon Feb 5, 2018, 10:48 AM - Edit history (1)
Benjamin Wittes @benjaminwittes 22m22 minutes agoI got more than 100 pages of internal FBI correspondence from the week of the Comey firing
from Lawfare Blog:
'I Hope This Is an Instance of Fake News': FBI Messages Show the Bureau's Real Reaction to Trump Firing James Comey
By Nora Ellingsen, Quinta Jurecic, Sabrina McCubbin, Shannon Togawa Mercer, Benjamin Wittes Monday, February 5, 2018
On June 22, 2017, Wittes made four FOIA requests. One of them sought communications to the workforce from the senior FBI leadership regarding Comey’s firing. Another sought communications on the topic from all the assistant directors and special agents in charge at the FBI’s many components and field offices to their respective teams. When the FBI did not respond in a timely manner, Wittes sued—represented by the folks at Protect Democracy—stating that his purpose was “to show conclusively that President Trump and his White House staff are lying about career federal law enforcement officers, their actions, and their attitudes”:
Who knows? Perhaps these documents will reveal an agency in turmoil, one whose rank and file had lost confidence in their director, one brimming with gratitude to President Trump for his decisive action in removing the "nut job." But don't hold your breath for a lot of "Ding Dong, The Witch is Dead" subject lines. I believe these documents, when the Bureau is finally forced to release them, will show that the White House's claims have been bald-faced lies—that Ellingsen was right about the attitudes of her former colleagues towards Comey, that McCabe was courageously telling the truth on the subject in his congressional testimony, and that the Bureau was not in turmoil before Comey's removal but reacted with shock to it.
Over the weekend, we received 103 pages of records responsive to Wittes’s first two requests—messages from FBI leadership around the country and across the bureau regarding the firing of Director Comey. The bureau identified 116 pages of responsive material and withheld only 13 pages, so this material constitutes the overwhelming bulk of communications to staff on the subject of the firing.
What does it show? Simply put, it shows that Ellingsen nailed it when she described a reaction of “shock” and “profound sadness” at the removal of a beloved figure to whom the workforce was deeply attached. It also shows that no aspect of the White House’s statements about the bureau were accurate—and, indeed, that the White House engendered at least some resentment among the rank and file for whom it purported to speak. As Amy Hess, the special agent in charge in Louisville, put it: “On a personal note, I vehemently disagree with any negative assertions about the credibility of this institution or the people herein.”
>>
Lest any of the following appear hagiographic on our part, here (at link) is a pdf of the entire FBI production we received. We urge people to read it for themselves and make their own judgments:
read more: https://www.lawfareblog.com/i-hope-instance-fake-news-fbi-messages-show-bureaus-real-reaction-trump-firing-james-comey
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