CNN is asking that a federal court compel the FBI to make public FBI director James Comey’s memos that describe his conversation with President Trump.
In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Washington on Thursday, CNN claims that despite the filing of a Freedom of Information Act request, the FBI has yet to make them available or give reason for not doing so. CNN reported on the lawsuit on its website.
“We think the public has the right to see them,” CNN president Jeff Zucker told Variety. “It’s in the pursuit of what we do every day. We think it’s in every journalist’s interest and we are happy to take the lead on this.
Comey testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee last week and described writing the memos as well as their contents. He also said that he purposely excluded classified information from the memos.
He said that he began writing memos after his first meeting with Trump in early January.
Comey gave the memos to a friend with the purpose of providing details to the media. The New York Times published a story on May 16, in which the friend described some of the contents of the memos. Included was Comey’s account of a Feb. 14 meeting in the Oval Office in which he claims that Trump said of the FBI’s investigation of Michael Flynn, “I hope you can let this go.”
Flynn was fired on May 9. After the disclosure of some of the contents of his memos, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller as a special counsel to investigate Russian interference into the 2016 election and whether members of Trump’s campaign colluded with Russian intelligence.
The Washington Post and other news outlets reported on Wednesday that Mueller is now investigating whether Trump obstructed justice in relation to the Russia probe.
