Former FBI Director James Comey briefed President Barack Obama about the investigation into Donald Trump’s campaign before the 2016 election, according to a report released today by the Justice Department’s inspector general.
According to Michael Horowitz:
When we asked Comey about meetings with the White House concerning Crossfire Hurricane, he said that although he did not brief the White House about the investigation, he did mention to President Obama and others at a meeting in the Situation Room that the FBI was trying to determine whether any U.S. person had worked with the Russians in their efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election. Comey said he thought it was important that the President know the nature of the FBI’s efforts without providing any specifics. Comey said although he did not recall exactly what he said, he may have said there were four individuals with ‘some association or connection to the Trump campaign.’ Comey stated that after he provided this information, no one at the meeting responded or followed up with any questions. Comey did not recall specifically when this meeting took place, but believed it may have been in August 2016.
The White House meeting also included then-National Security Advisor Susan Rice, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and then-CIA Director John Brennan, the inspector general found.
In early January 2017, Comey also notified Obama that he would brief Donald Trump about the most outlandish claim in the Steele dossier—that the Russians had a tape recording of prostitutes urinating on a bed with Trump in the presidential suite of the Moscow Ritz Carlton in 2013. When Comey told Obama about the way he would present the ludicrous accusation, according to Comey, “Obama . . . reportedly raised and lowered both eyebrows, like a Groucho Marx thing.”
No reporter has yet to ask Barack Obama what he knew about his FBI’s counterintelligence probe into Donald Trump’s campaign or when he knew it.