Yuri Gripas/Reuters
President Trump’s personal lawyer on Thursday responded to James Comey’s Senate Intel testimony by going after the former FBI chief for his “unauthorized disclosures” of “privileged information” in feeding his memos to the press after his firing. “Mr. Comey’s testimony... makes clear that the president never sought to impede the investigation into attempted Russian interference in the 2016 election,” the president’s attorney Marc Kasowitz said in the public statement. Despite Comey testifying that Trump demanded loyalty from him during a private meeting, Kasowitz said it never happened, further adding that “the Office of the President is entitled to expect loyalty from those who are serving in an administration, and, from before this President took office to this day, it is overwhelmingly clear that there have been and continue to be those in government who are actively attempting to undermine this administration with selective and illegal leaks of classified information and privileged communications. Mr. Comey has now admitted that he is one of these leakers.” He continued: “Comey admitted that he unilaterally and surreptitiously made unauthorized disclosures to the press of privileged communications with the President... Comey admitted that he leaked to friends his purported memos of these privileged conversations, one of which he testified was classified. He also testified that immediately after he was terminated he authorized his friends to leak the contents of these memos to the press in order to “prompt the appointment of a special counsel.” The leak of the Comey memos, Kasowitz concluded, “appears to [sic] entirely retaliatory.”