In the wake of all the Senate Intelligence Committee hearings surrounding the Russia investigation, Russian President Vladimir Putin recently said the country would be prepared to give former FBI Director James Comey political asylum.
Some news outlets reported that Putin said this in a sarcastic manner during his annual question-and-answer call-in session on Russian state television last week.
During his hearing earlier this month, Comey said, under oath, that Russia did allegedly meddle in the 2016 Presidential election and that President Donald Trump was not being investigated, nor did he obstruct the investigation.
After Comey’s firing on May 9, and the subsequent tweets from Trump where the President threatened there may be “tapes” of their conversations, Comey asked a “close friend” to leak a memo to the media.
Comey asked Columbia law professor Daniel Richman to leak the memo with the hope it would trigger a special counsel appointment.
The next day, Robert Mueller was named as Special Prosecutor.
“What makes the FBI director different from Mr. Snowden then,” Putin asked last week, referring to Edward Snowden, who in 2013 leaked classified information to the National Security Agency (NSA). “It seems to me that in that case he’s not so much the head of the FBI as an activist who has a particular point of view.”
“By the way, if he faces some sort of prosecution in this regard, we are ready to give him political asylum, as well. He should know that,” Putin added.
(Twitter)
Richman confirmed to the Huffington Post that he was the “close friend” who leaked the memo for Comey.
The Senate Intelligence Committee is investigating that a foreign adversary – Russia – “attacked us right here at home” and has “highjacked our most important Democratic process,” the election, according to Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia who is the vice chairman of the committee.
The committee questioned Comey on Thursday regarding the investigation into Russian spies “engaged in a series of online cyber raids and a broad campaign of dis-information,” according to Warner, “sowing chaos to undermine public faith in our [Democratic] process, […] leadership and ourselves.”
[revad2]
