Cameron Joseph – Fired FBI Director James Comey has retained former U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald as one of his personal attorneys, bringing in a heavy-hitting former prosecutor, close friend and longtime colleague to help him navigate his dramatic role as a potential witness in the investigation of President Trump’s campaign and potential obstruction of justice.
Two Capitol Hill sources independently told TPM that Fitzgerald was serving as a lawyer for Comey. After publication, Fitzgerald confirmed that he “has been part of Mr. Comey’s legal team since May 2017.”
The news adds an additional twist to President Trump’s recent decision to pardon Scooter Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, for his role in the Valerie Plame affair.
Comey, then the deputy attorney general, was the man who authorized the special counsel’s investigation into “the alleged unauthorized disclosure of a CIA employee’s identity” in late 2003, the case that eventually led to Libby’s conviction for perjury and obstruction of justice. His choice for special counsel, the prosecutor who got the guilty verdict on Libby, was none other than Fitzgerald.
Comey and Fitzgerald have been close friends for more than three decades, going back to their time working together in the Southern District of New York’s U.S. Attorney’s Office starting in the late 1980s, and knew each other even before then. Fitzgerald is the godfather of one of Comey’s children. In a joint interview in 2008 about their tight bond, Comey described Fitzgerald as a “close friend” as they reminisced about the glory days working their first cases together.
David Kelley, another of Comey’s old allies whom he’s brought on as one of his attorneys, would neither confirm nor deny to TPM that Comey had hired Fitzgerald — but noted that “Pat and Jim have been friends and colleagues for a long time.”
“I’ve represented Mr. Comey since not long after his firing,” Kelley told TPM, but would only say “Ask Pat” when pressed on if Fitzgerald was working with him.
After publication, Comey confirmed that Fitzgerald was working as his attorney.
“He’s been representing me since I was fired,” he said at a Tuesday evening eventin D.C. promoting his book.
Fitzgerald originally declined to comment on TPM’s reporting, or to clarify in what exact role he was working for Comey.
Columbia University Professor Daniel Richman, another close friend of Comey’s who is serving as one of his attorneys and with whom Comey shared some of his memos about his meetings with President Trump to leak to the press, didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment for the story.
SF Source True Pundit Apr 2018