To refresh your memories, James Comey was the FBI Director when Trump took office. Many of us were ready to lynch him when, a few weeks before the election, he announced that the investigation into candidate Hillary Clinton's handling of emails was being re-opened. A week later it was "Oops, nothing to see here, nothing new, false alarm." He referred us back to his much earlier proclamation that Clinton had broken no laws, but "was extremely careless". This guy was no friend of Democrat or of anyone who opposed Trump. It was widely believed that this late announcement tipped the scales toward Trump in what turned out to be close margins in battleground states.
What he didn't announce was that the FBI was also investigating the Trump campaign regarding Russian influence. It became known that several top Trump officials, including then National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, were under investigation. Flynn soon resigned. Comey was summoned to the White House for several one-on-one meetings with Trump. In several of these meetings people such as then Attorney General Jeff Sessions, technically Comey's boss, were excused from the room for these private discussions. Comey kept notes of these meetings during which he says that Trump asked him to "let this Flynn thing go" and asked him if he was loyal. Comey was fired as FBI Director shortly thereafter. Trump is reported to have said to visiting Russian officials that Comey was a "nut job" and that now that he was gone the Russia investigation would go away.
Once he was fired, Comey took his notes of these meetings with him and eventually turned them over to the press. The memos themselves, with some redaction, are available to anyone who wants to look at them. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4442900-Ex-FBI-Director-James-Comey-s-memos.html It is possible that getting this information out spurred the appointment of the Special Counsel.
For the last two years Comey has been a target of attacks by Trump, who has painted him as "a liar and a leaker", in all likelihood to undercut any credibility that Comey may have and frame his memos as politically motivated. The attacks, as I previously noted, have escalated in the past few days. The Inspector General's Report makes two main points: that the memos were not, as Comey claimed, personal recollections, but were FBI records and that holding on to them after he was fired and giving them to the media violated FBI rules. At no point in the Inspector General's report are not contents of the memos called into question.
Trump has been crowing about this report as if it's some great victory. I beg to differ. Comey has been accused of being a grand-stander; he has been accused by Democrats and Republicans alike of making improper announcements and of improperly editorializing on investigations. I don't disagree, but passing on these memos looks to me to be the equivalent of whistle-blowing. The conversations that Comey memorialized in his memos could be interpreted as the beginnings of the obstruction that clearly has been taking place throughout Trump's presidency. Trump tried to get his FBI Director to drop an ongoing investigation; he tried to secure his personal loyalty. When he couldn't get either, he fired the man, laughed about it with officials from a hostile government, and embarked upon a campaign of disparagement and attempted to undermine his credibility.
Personally I'm glad that we have public servants who will put the good of the country above bureaucratic rules.
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