Fired FBI Director James Comey says he showed copies of his memos to a friend and asked him to leak it to the press https://t.co/tzmROzGnrf
— CNN (@CNN) June 8, 2017
About an hour before James Comey delivered his opening remarks to the Senate Intelligence Committee in a public hearing, fired Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly declared his intention to live-tweet the matter. “I will be live tweeting the Comey testimony so alert the media! Wait, I am the media,” the podcaster quipped, “please alert your friends.” Much of what followed in O’Reilly’s live-tweeted extravaganza shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who had watched at least one episode of The O’Reilly Factor in its heyday, but the former talking head dug himself into a particularly deep hope when he flubbed the dates of Comey’s firing.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) asked Comey whether or not he “showed copies of [his] memos to anyone outside of the Depatment of Justice,” and if so, who he showed them to. Citing the president’s tweeted threat about there possibly being “tapes,” Comey said he thought “there might be corroboration” between his written memos and such tapes. The led him to determine he “[needed] to get that out into the public square,” and he asked a friend at Columbia University to share the content of a memo with a reporter. “That might prompt the appointment of a special counsel,” Comey concluded.
Whether or not Comey’s leaks did in fact prompt Robert Mueller’s appointment remains to be seen, but O’Reilly was quick to latch onto the admission:
As of this writing, O’Reilly’s tweeted suggestion that Trump fired Comey because of the leaks hasn’t been deleted yet. The ex-Fox News personality may reconsider, however, as the responses are rife with his fellow pundits, reporters and Twitter trolls reminding him that Comey’s leaks came after Trump had fired him.
He was already fired.
— Hadas Gold (@Hadas_Gold) June 8, 2017
He had already been fired, Bill.
— Dave Hogg ✨ (@stareagle) June 8, 2017
He'd already been fired, dipshit.
— Mikel Jollett (@Mikel_Jollett) June 8, 2017
https://twitter.com/itsa_talia/status/872842993803427840
https://twitter.com/bdgrabinski/status/872843193909297153
https://twitter.com/LevNovak/status/872842757588561920
https://twitter.com/cbeilinson/status/872843871746523137
https://twitter.com/mrdavidduran/status/872843525628469248
Bill this is huge and it seems like you're the only one that caught it. You should talk about this on your television show, that you host!
— David Roth (@david_j_roth) June 8, 2017
https://twitter.com/IanFortey/status/872843187269898240
(Via CNN)