If CNN's chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin has bad news for former FBI Director James Comey you know it has to be real bad. Toobin delivered his bad news about Comey's leaked memos on Monday's The Lead which was hosted by Jim Sciutto. The news that Toobin presented might be enough for Comey to break out his worry beads: he placed himself in a "pretty vulnerable position" by leaking them.
JIM SCIUTTO: Well, let's look at president's tweet over the weekend regarding the special counsel. He said the following, quote, James Comey illegally leaked classified documents to the press in order to generate a special counsel, misspelled, therefore the special counsel was established based on an illegal act, question mark, really does everybody know what that means? Jeffrey, what is the president implying there?
JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: Well, what he is saying is that when James Comey took those memos that recounted his conversations with the president and gave them to Professor Dan Richman at Columbia University, that was an illegal leak, especially since he considered -- he knew that Richman was going to give that to the press --
SCIUTTO: But are notes about a conversation with the president taken by then a private citizen, are those classified?
TOOBIN: They may or may not be. And in fact when the administration or Congress released those -- some versions of those memos, some of the portions were blacked out. I think James Comey actually is in a pretty vulnerability position here. Just because something is not marked classified doesn't mean that after the fact it couldn't be retroactively designated classified. I think James Comey may really have a problem there.
The president is wrong however that the leak was what caused the appointment of the special counsel. What caused the appointment of the special counsel was the president firing James Comey. That was the key -- that was the key event which had nothing to do with the president's -- with Comey's leaks.
So, you know, the president is pushing on a vulnerability of Comey, but he's giving a misleading picture of how these events unfolded.
Um, I hate to break it to you, Jeffrey, but you know who else claimed that the memo leak brought about the appointment of the special counsel? James Comey himself as he testified to Maine Senator Susan Collins last June.
James Comey: I asked a friend of mine to share the content of a memo with a reporter, I didn’t do it myself for a variety of reasons, but I asked him to because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel.
