FBI Refuses to Release Docs About Secret Comey-Obama Meeting, Says America Doesn’t Need to Know

by Richard Pollock


  • The FBI will not expedite the release of documents about secret meetings between Comey and Obama.
  • Comey held a secret Oval Office meeting with Obama on Jan. 5, 2017.
  • TheDCNF requested records of all meetings between the two.

The FBI states it will not expedite the release of documents about secret meetings between FBI Director James Comey and former President Barack Obama, according to a letter the bureau sent to The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Such information is not “a matter of widespread and exceptional media interest in which there exists possible questions about the government’s integrity which affects public confidence,” David Hardy, the section chief for the bureau’s Record/Information Dissemination Section, told TheDCNF in a Feb. 26 letter.

TheDCNF, under the Freedom of Information Act, requested records of all meetings between Comey and Obama and sought an “expedited process” as provided under the act when issues are of great interest to the media and the records address issues pertaining to government integrity. TheDCNF FOIA request was filed Feb. 16, 2018.  The issue prompting the FOIA request was the disclosure Comey held a secret Oval Office meeting with Obama on Jan. 5, 2017. Comey never divulged the meeting to Congress.

Susan Rice, Obama’s national security adviser, former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, and former Vice President Joe Biden also attended the meeting.

The National Archives revealed the existence of the meeting and released a declassified version of an email Rice sent to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Rice wrote an email to herself about the secret Jan. 5 meeting with Comey on Inauguration Day Jan. 20, 2017, as President Donald Trump was being sworn into office. The email suggested Comey may have misled Congress and was attempting to cover up the extent of his relationship with Obama.

Christopher Bedford, TheDCNF’s editor in chief, called the FBI denial “shameful.”

“The FBI just told us that Director James Comey potentially lying to Congress should not be of interest to us, that it doesn’t speak to their ‘integrity,’ and that it shouldn’t impact America’s ‘confidence’ in them,” Bedford said. “They said this with a straight face. We disagree, we think the American people disagree, and we think it’s absolutely shameful.”

Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and subcommittee chairman, and Lindsey Graham released the Rice email after they received it from the National Archives.

“President Obama had a brief follow-on conversation with FBI Director Comey and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates in the Oval Office,” Rice stated in the email on Jan. 5. 

The president urged Comey to proceed “by the book” on the Russian investigation, according to Rice.  Grassley of Iowa and Graham of South Carolina wrote to Rice in a Feb. 8 letter saying the email seemed “odd” to them.

“It strikes us as odd that, among your activities in the final moments on the final day of the Obama administration, you would feel the need to send yourself such an unusual email purporting to document a conversation involving President Obama,” the two wrote.  “Despite your claim that President Obama repeatedly told Mr. Comey to proceed ‘by the book,’ substantial questions have arisen about whether officials at the FBI, as well as at the Justice Department and the State Department, actually did proceed ‘by the book,’” the two senators continued.

Comey claimed in June 8, 2017, testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence he had only two face-to-face meetings with the president in which they were alone.

“I spoke alone with President Obama twice in person (and never on the phone) – once in 2015 to discuss law enforcement policy issues and a second time, briefly, for him to say goodbye in late 2016,” Comey’s opening statement read.  The qualifier that he had meetings with Obama “alone” permitted the former director to suggest he only met with the former president on two occasions.

The DCNF filed its FOIA request before the bureau “seeking records that identify and describe all meetings between former FBI Director James Comey and President Barack Obama. This records request is for all meetings with Obama alone or with meetings with the president in the company of other administration officials.”   The DCNF requested records to include all Comey “logs, director appointment schedules, emails and memos outlining the meetings with the former President along with administration officials,” adding, the records “should list the date of the meeting, location, topic and meeting participants.”  TheDCNF stated it sought an “expedited request” for producing the records. 

“The issue of Director Comey’s meetings with President Obama is a key troubling issue for Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley,” TheDCNF wrote in its application for the expedited processing. TheDCNF attached to Grassly-Graham letter to Rice in the FOIA request for expediting handling.

Hardy said The DCNF failed to meet its standards for expedited processing as provided under 28 CFR 16.5 (e)(1)(iv).

“You have not provided enough information concerning the statutory requirements permitting expedition: therefore your request is denied,” he told TheDCNF.

A version of this article appeared on The Daily Caller News Foundation website.


Mary Jo Kopechne

by Anonymous

A few days ago, from her grave, I thought I heard Mary Jo Kopechne (July 26, 1940-July 18, 1969) call. "This year, I would have been 67 years old. As my only wish, please refresh your memory of me and my murderer."

"Sometime around midnight, on July 18, 1969 Kennedy drove his Oldsmobile 88 off of a small bridge on Chappaquiddick island, into eight feet of chilly water. The vehicle landed upside-down. While Kennedy managed to free himself from the wreck and swim to safety, his passenger, 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne was left in the car to drown."

{"Leaving the scene of an accident is a felony. If someone dies it might even be manslaughter. This would be even more likely if the person who died could have been saved by a simple call to a rescue team...the accident at Dike Bridge on Chappaquiddick Island on July 18, 1969 probably cost Edward M. Kennedy the presidency. It certainly cost Mary Jo Kopechne her life." }

"Sen Kennedy told the police that he was driving Kopechne to the ferry after a party on the island when his car left the unfamiliar road."In the interview with John Farrar, the scuba diver who found Mary Jo, stated that engineers determined that Kennedy hit the water at between 35 to 40 mph, but Kennedy testified it was no more than 20 mph. Mary Jo took more than an hour to die, trapped in Kennedy's 1967 oldsmobile, in only 8 ft of salty water beneath Dike bridge.

Ted Kennedy drunkenly drove his car off a bridge, extricated himself, and left Miss Kopechne behind to die in the waters underneath the Edgartown, Massachusetts, Bridge on July 17th, 1969 after a night of drinking and partying with the young blonde campaign worker. But most Americans under 40 have never heard that story, or the details of how Kennedy swam to safety, and then tried to get his cousin Joe Garghan to say he, Garghan, was behind the wheel.

"Right from the start, the reporters who arrived at the scene were skeptical of his story, skeptical even of how he claimed he got back to Edgartown that night. Markham and Gargan said when they drove to the ferry landing — the ferry had stopped running by then — Kennedy took them by surprise by jumping in the water, and swimming across the channel towards Edgartown. They assumed, they said, he would report the accident that night to the police. Instead Kennedy went back to his hotel, ostensibly to change his clothes but instead, went downstairs to complain about a noisy party that was going on. "

"Because no autopsy is ever performed on Kopechne's body (her body had been promptly whisked out of state) it is uncertain how long it took her to drown, if she wasn't killed on impact. Likewise, it is never established whether Kopechne was pregnant or exhibited signs of recent sexual activity."

Young voters don't know how Miss Kopechne, trapped inside Kennedy's Oldsmobile, gasped for air until she finally died (some medical experts saying two and one-half hours later), while this leading Democrat war critic rushed back to his family's compound to formulate the best alibi he could think of.

Nor does Generation X know how Kennedy was thrown out of Harvard on his ear in 1951 for paying a fellow student to take his Spanish final. Nor why the US Army denied him a commission because he cheated on tests.

As they listen to the Democrats' "Liberal Lion" accuse President Bush of "telling lie after lie after lie" to get America to go to war in Iraq, young voters don't know about that notorious 1991 Easter weekend in Palm Beach, when Uncle Teddy rounded up his nephews for a night on the town, an evening that ended with one of them credibly accused of rape.

Kansas Characterized by Legislative and Judicial Failure

by Tim Golba


Five courageous Kansas legislators demonstrated their commitment to defending the unborn by submitting their resignations to the House Speaker Melvin Neufeld on the morning of Sine Die. They desperately tried to reason with the speaker, but at the vary least they drew the line in the sand with their unprecedented resignations.

I wish to commend these five legislators for standing together for the unborn. Up till now, I have been reluctantly willing to extend to the House Speaker the benefit of the doubt when he recently requested thirty to forty days to execute his plan (a time period that expires about mid to late June). Here are the concerns:

JUDICIAL FAILURE: A Wichita district attorney and a traffic judge blocked a standing attorney general’s charges against George Tiller with no legal basis to stand on.

JUDICIAL COVER-UP: The traffic judge who had received campaign contributions from Tiller’s attorney and the district attorney was charged with ethical violations for not removing himself from the case. These complaints were dismissed because the judge claimed that he did not look at his own campaign reports.

JUDICIAL FAILURE: Two judges have found probable cause to believe that crimes have been committed. The latest judge found the evidence of criminal activity was directly linked to Tiller. The allegations claim that Dr. Tiller performed abortions for temporary mental health concerns.

All the evidence to support that finding was filed with the original court case and has been available directly to the Attorney General since he was sworn into office. Considering the fact that Carla Stovall, who is pro-choice, stated in a 2000 AG opinion that temporary mental health concerns did not justify a late-term abortion on a viable fetus, do not the allegations indicate that Tiller violated the law? Does the complaint not list the actual diagnosis provided for the abortions? If so, why has Paul Morrison not filed charges? Why did Morrison dismiss the appeal that he promised not to interfere with?

JUDICIAL COVER-UP: Attorney General Paul Morrison fired the Democrat special prosecutor and then has stalled time and again to make a conclusive statement regarding the 30 charges. Let’s not forget the huge campaign debt that Morrison has to Tiller and Planned Parenthood.

LEGISLATIVE INACTION: After the Federal and State Affairs committee voted 12-8 to a approve a resolution designed to force Morrison to reinstate all 30 charge counts against Tiller, Speaker Melvin Neufeld forbade a vote on the floor (according to Tim Carpenter of the Capital-Journal 6-1-07).

LEGISLATIVE INACTION: Speaker Neufeld thus far refused to allow the Federal and State Affairs or the Appropriations Committees to have subpoena power to investigate these judicial failures. ‘A witch hunt is how Neufeld recently characterized the process of the legislative branch holding the judicial branch accountable for enforcing the law.

LEGISLATIVE LEADERSHIP PROMISES: Speaker Melvin Neufeld, the Kansas House Speaker and others in House Leadership are attempting to buy themselves some time by promising a coming announcement of new initiatives in the battle against abortion. The speaker indicated to me along with others that he needed another thirty to forty days to execute his plan. He made this compromise in mid-May and now his time has about run. IS THIS NOT A CONTRADICTION? Is Speaker Neufeld executing a plan as promised? Why would a reasonable person think that the debt that Paul Morrison owes to Tiller would allow him to send Tiller to prison? Why would Paul Morrison not just slap Tiller’s hand, fine him a few dollars and seal the damning evidence that no Attorney General before Phill Kline has ever been able to access? Has Neufeld ever had any intentions of holding Tiller accountable for his crimes?

Federal and State Affairs Committee Chair, Arlen Siegfried, admitted to an Olathe News reporter on May 23rd, that his committee discussed early in the session whether they should pursue an investigation of Tiller, but that House leadership decided to leave the matter in Morrison’s hands. IS THIS NOT OBVIOUS?

Paul Morrison is no more inclined to enforce the law than any of the other Tiller bought political cronies that have covered for him to date. It is time to place principle and the rule of law (in opposition to the Tiller killing machine) above politics and just simply do the right thing! There are a lot of unanswered questions. The mid to late June extension for Speaker Neufeld’s plan is fast approaching. As a result, every pro-life advocate, every pro-life citizen of this state now anxiously awaits the fruit that will come from the Speaker's investigative and legislative efforts during the next few weeks. As always, it is our responsibility to monitor the progress of our public officials as they represent our best interests.


{Tim Golba is past President of Kansans for Life and project co-ordinator for the Judicial Watch, an organization seeking to hold judges to a strict interpretation of the law and Constitution. - Ed}