After months of resisting, the Justice Department has agreed to provide three House committees with copies of several memos written by former FBI Director James Comey, according to a person familiar with the agreement.
The move comes as House Republicans have escalated criticism of the department, threatening to subpoena the documents and questioning Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and other officials. The person familiar with the agreement spoke to The Associated Press on Thursday on condition of anonymity because the documents had not yet been sent to Congress.
Justice officials had allowed some lawmakers to view the memos but had never provided copies to the House committees.
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Comey is on a publicity tour to promote his new book, “A Higher Loyalty.” He revealed last year that he had written the memos after conversations with President Donald Trump, who later fired him.
In a Senate hearing in June, he told Congress that “I knew there might come a day when I would need a record of what had happened, not just to defend myself, but to defend the FBI and our integrity as an institution and the independence of our investigative function.”
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Details from some memos were made public in media accounts in the days after he was fired. At the Senate hearing, Comey detailed his conversations with Trump.
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One memo recounts a February request from Trump, during a private meeting in the Oval Office, that Comey end an investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Last week, the GOP chairmen of three House committees demanded the memos by Monday. The Justice Department asked for more time, and the lawmakers agreed.
Comey said in an interview Thursday with CNN that he’s “fine” with the Justice Department turning his memos over to Congress.
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“I think what folks will see if they get to see the memos is I’ve been consistent since the very beginning right after my encounters with President Trump and I’m consistent in the book and tried to be transparent in the book as well,” he said.
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