Trump Lied About Terrorists, Comey's Friend Claims
BY MAX KUTNER ON 8/14/17 AT 11:40 AM
President Donald Trump was not telling the truth when he said most terrorists who struck the United States came from abroad, according to a new lawsuit by Benjamin Wittes, a friend of former FBI Director James Comey.
Wittes is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the co-founder and editor in chief of Lawfare, a national security blog that has gained attention since the November election. The lawsuit, which Wittes filed on August 11 and announced the next day, challenges a claim Trump made in February before a joint session of Congress, when the president said, “According to data provided by the Department of Justice, the vast majority of individuals convicted of terrorism and terrorism-related offenses since 9/11 came here from outside of our country.”
Lawfare investigated the claim and has said it is inaccurate. “I not only believe that the White House made up ‘alternative facts’ about the substance of this matter in a presidential address to a joint session of Congress,” Wittes wrote in April. “I don’t believe that the National Security Division of the Justice Department provided any data or analysis to the White House that could reasonably be read to support the president’s claim. In other words, I believe the president was lying not merely about the underlying facts but also about his own Justice Department.”
On Saturday, Wittes wrote in a blog post that he had filed a Freedom of Information Act request months ago for communications between the Justice Department and the White House about Trump’s remark. Because he had not heard back about the request, he filed the lawsuit, alleging a violation of the Freedom of Information Act.
Before Trump fired Comey on May 9, Wittes was known among journalists as a source close to the FBI director. About a week after the firing, Wittes drew attention after telling The New York Times that Comey had wanted to maintain a distance from Trump, once even trying to blend in with the curtains so that the president would not call him out. On June 8, when Comey testified to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that he had given a memo about former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn to a friend to pass along to the press, referring to Columbia University professor Daniel Richman, a senator on the panel responded, “Mr. Wittes?”
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http://www.newsweek.com/comey-friend-benjamin-wittes-lawfare-lawsuit-trump-650552
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