Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales says Attorney General Jeff Sessions and former FBI Director James Comey have been “failing to do their job.”
“I fault General Sessions — maybe he did, maybe he inquired into what was going on here — but I also fault Jim Comey,” Gonzales, who served under former President George W. Bush, told host Rita Cosby on WABC Radio on Friday.
“The inspector general at the Department of Justice is going to look at this, and they’re going to write a report, and I think it’s going to be a scathing report, condemning both the attorney general and the former FBI director for failing to do their job protecting the FBI,” he added.
{mosads}Gonzales added that both men “put at risk the independence of the FBI.”
“There was an obligation on both the attorney general and the leadership team within main Justice as well as an obligation [on] the FBI director for communication to ensure that there’s no undue pressure being placed by the White House upon the FBI.”
Comey on Thursday said that he began keeping personal memos about his meetings with President Trump as he suspected the president might lie about them.
“I was honestly concerned he might lie about the nature of our meeting, so I thought it really important to document,” he told the Senate Intelligence Committee.
“I knew there might come a day when I might need a record of what happens, not only to defend myself but to defend the FBI and our integrity as an institution and the independent investigative function.”
Comey wrote a memo in mid-February claiming that Trump pressed him to end the investigation into his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, a day after Flynn’s ouster.
“I hope you can let this go,” Trump told Comey, according to the memo.
Trump fired Comey in early May amid the FBI’s investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election, including possible ties between the Trump campaign and Moscow.