Comey Friend: Memos Former FBI Director Gave Me Were Not Marked Classified

A friend of former FBI Director James Comey told CNN Monday that memos Comey gave him to release to journalists after he was fired by President Donald Trump were not marked classified.

"No memo was given to me that was marked 'classified,'" Columbia University Law School professor Daniel Richman told CNN. "No memo was passed on to the Times.”

Richman received at least one memo from Comey and shared it with New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt. Comey wrote the memos as personal recollections of his conversations with Trump regarding the Russia investigation.

The president on Monday accused Comey of having illegally leaked classified information following a report in The Hill that more than half the notes Comey wrote documenting Russia-related conversations with the president contained sensitive information.

Comey during Senate testimony in June said he purposely wrote the memos to avoid including classified information.

"My thinking was, if I write it in such a way that I don't include anything that would trigger a classification, that'll make it easier for us to discuss, within the FBI and the government, and to – to hold on to it in a way that makes it accessible to us," he said.

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