by Kathryn Blackhurst, Lifezette:

Judicial Watch chief says Jim Comey went ‘beyond the pale’ in coordinating congressional testimony with FBI, special counsel

There will be “a fourth or a third or a fifth shoe to drop” as the Department of Justice (DOJ) keeps slow-walking the turnover of requested documents to Congress because “there’s embarrassing information at issue here,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton predicted Thursday on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle.”

The nonprofit government watchdog released new DOJ emails Thursday showing that high-ranking FBI officials advised former FBI Director James Comey, shortly after his firing, to coordinate with special counsel Robert Mueller ahead of Comey’s congressional testimony.

Judicial Watch only obtained the emails after filing two Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, beginning in August 2017.

After asking for the FBI officials’ advice, Comey met with Mueller before his June 2017 testimony about Russia’s meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. During the email exchange with the FBI officials, Comey asked to review the memos he wrote, which contained classified information detailing his private conversations with President Donald Trump. Comey asked a friend of his to leak these memos to the press after Trump fired him.

Fitton (pictured above left) told Fox News host Laura Ingraham that the emails Judicial Watch obtained show that Comey “was fired by the president, and within a day or so he is communicating with the FBI about upcoming testimony.”

Fitton said “typically there would be some coordination” going on, but he insisted that Comey’s coordination with top FBI officials “was beyond the pale in terms of what government officials are typically allowed to say in such situations.”

“Certainly if you’re an FBI director and you’re having meetings with the president of the United States, typically the agencies tell you you’re not allowed to talk about it,” Fitton said. “You’re not allowed to talk about documents you created at the FBI about those conversations.”

“Comey had … free reign during his testimony, and it was blessed both by the FBI, it looks like, and by Mr. Mueller,” Fitton added.

Then-FBI chief of staff James Rybicki sent a draft of his response to Comey’s request for advice to then-acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe and other senior bureau executives in which Rybicki recommended that Comey’s counsel should “consult with special counsel Mueller to determine the timing of any such testimony.”

“The Office of General Counsel stands ready to discuss with you in consultation with the Department of Justice and the special counsel, institutional privileges or prerogatives that may be presented by any such testimony,” the draft continued.

Solomon Wisenberg (pictured above, right), former deputy independent counsel for Kenneth Starr’s Whitewater-Lewinsky investigation of former President Bill Clinton, told Ingraham that he didn’t “see any problem for Mueller” with Comey’s communications.

“It’s very clear that Comey has had a man crush on Mueller for quite some time and wants to wrap himself in Mueller’s glory,” Wisenberg said. “But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Comey going to Mueller and saying, ‘I’m going to testify. Do you have any problem with what I’m going to say or how I’m going to say it?'”

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