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MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow has been following the Trump-Russia scandal more closely and thoroughly than anyone else in the media. It’s largely because of her determined and illuminating reporting on both the multitude of characters and the never ending developments in this ever evolving saga that The Rachel Maddow Show recently became the most watched program in all of cable news.
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Late Tuesday, while much of the media remained focused on the FBI raid of longtime Trump attorney Michael Cohen’s home and offices a day earlier, Maddow broke major news over a long forgotten front in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation: Trump’s potentially justice-obstructing firing of former FBI Director James Comey.
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As you may recall, Comey launched a counterintelligence investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election shortly after Trump’s shock victory in November of that year. That investigation expanded when newly minted National Security Advisor Michael Flynn got caught lying to the FBI about his contacts with Kremlin-linked Russian operatives. Flynn was fired after just 24 days into the Trump administration.
In the weeks and months that followed, Comey alleged that the president improperly suggested on multiple occasions that he should back off of investigating Michael Flynn. He also accused Trump of pressuring him to make public statements affirming that he (Trump) was not personally under investigation by the FBI. Comey refused.
The president sacked Comey of May 9th of 2017, ostensibly for the way he handled Hillary Clinton’s email investigation. But within days, Trump admitted in an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt that he “had Russia on my mind” when making the decision to fire his FBI Director.
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Within days of that interview, Comey engineered the release of contemporaneous memos he had filed with the FBI after meetings with the president. He later admitted he did so to ensure his investigation would not die.
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Trump’s train wreck interview and the documents Comey released into the public sphere prompted Congress to call Comey in to testify.
During his public testimony, Comey recounted the potentially criminal requests he alleges Trump made of him during their meetings, which complimented the assertions he made in his now public memos.
President Trump flatly denied everything Comey alleged under oath before Congress. He neither pressured the former FBI director to back off of Michael Flynn, nor asked Comey to make public statements exonerating him, he insisted. Trump even called James Comey a liar.
James Comey made one other stunning admission during his testimony, however. He didn’t simply take notes after his meetings with the president. He told senior colleagues at the Justice Department about his troubling encounters with President Trump, and urged them to memorialize his accounts.
One of those senior Justice Department officials was Dana Boente. Boente, a longtime respected federal attorney, most recently in the Eastern District of Virginia, was, at the time Comey met with him over these matters, serving as the Acting Deputy Attorney General of the United States, a position he held until Trump’s appointee could be confirmed after the inauguration.
Boente took contemporaneous notes of his own after meeting with Comey, and – surprise, surprise – they appear to corroborate the version of events advanced by the fallen former FBI directer, while contradicting everything Trump has said publicly about their encounters in rebuttal.
Maddow obtained copies of Boente’s hand written notes – which had been recently declassified – and unveiled them to her viewers Tuesday night.
"That would be great to get out" pic.twitter.com/PvMWL9FFUQ
— Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) April 11, 2018
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Exclusive: Handwritten notes we believe were written by Dana Boente on his talking with James Comey about the "cloud" of the Russia investigation: pic.twitter.com/7VkJtX2WHb
— Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) April 11, 2018
"I c/n be speaking with the pres. alone…" pic.twitter.com/YX5vhKyoOv
— Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) April 11, 2018
It’s unclear whether or not special counsel Robert Mueller has these documents. It’s also uncertain how these support any case he may be making that the President of the Untied States obstructed justice when he fired the FBI Director, someone who was leading the investigation into collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
This does, however, blow a gaping hole into both the president’s credibility and the already crumbling defense his many allies in the right wing media have been desperately mounting for over a year.
You can watch this segment of The Rachel Maddow Show below and decide for yourself.
