Newly declassified memos reveal James Comey’s secret media mole Daniel Richman leaked classified information to The New York Times’s Michael Schmidt to help push for a special counsel in May 2017.
It was previously reported that James Comey penned nine memos stemming from his conversations with President Trump – and then leaked them through his Columbia University law professor ‘friend’ Daniel Richman.
Comey told the Senate Intel Committee in a June 2017 testimony that he asked a ‘friend’ of his to leak contents from memos he kept regarding his conversation with President Trump to the New York Times.
Comey admitted this after Senator Susan Collins asked him why he kept the memos. She then asked if he ever shared any of them outside the DOJ.
Daniel Richman confirmed to the Washington Examiner that he was Comey’s friend at Columbia. He has been referred to in the New York Times as a “longtime confidant and friend of Mr. Comey’s,” and his bio at Columbia’s website lists him as an “adviser to FBI Director James B. Comey.”
Not once did he ever disclose Daniel Richman was one of his personal lawyers or an unpaid employee of the FBI until right before his testimony.
In newly declassified memos, it was revealed that Comey shared classified information with Daniel Richman.
Richman told agents conducting the FBI’s “Arctic Haze” investigation that some of the classified information was all the way up to the SCI level [Sensitive Compartmented Information].
According to Just The News, the Arctic Haze investigation focused on four articles stemming from Richman’s leaks.
“The first was a New York Times article by four reporters — Schmidt, Matt Apuzzo, Adam Goldman, and Eric Lichtblau — from late April 2017 titled “Comey Tried to Shield the F.B.I. from Politics. Then He Shaped an Election.” The second was a Washington Post story by Ellen Nakashima from early April 2017 titled “New details emerge about 2014 Russian hack of the State Department: It was ‘hand to hand combat’.”” Just The News reported.
“The third was another Washington Post piece by Karoun Demirjian and Devlin Barrett from late May 2017 titled, “How a Dubious Russian Document Influenced the FBI’s Handling of the Clinton Probe.” The fourth was a Wall Street Journal article by Holman Jenkins Jr. from late May 2017 titled, “The Trump-Russia Story Starts Making Sense.”” Just The News reported.
The leaks ultimately worked. On May 17, 2017, then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller to serve as Special Counsel to investigate the Trump-Russia collusion hoax.
Just The News reported:
The FBI concluded numerous legacy news media stories that crafted the false Russia collusion narrative contained illegally leaked classified intelligence but failed to definitively identify the leakers. But agents did force a stunning admission that ex-FBI Director James Comey used a special conduit to the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times in his bid to polish his image and push for a special prosecutor to take down President Donald Trump.
Columbia University law professor Daniel Richman admitted to agents in interviews he routinely communicated on behalf of Comey, his longtime friend, with Times reporter Michael Schmidt, whose work was among the newspaper’s 2018 Pulitzer-winning stories on Russian election interference. The goal, Richman told the FBI, was “to correct stories critical of Comey, the FBI and to shape future press coverage” outside of the bureau’s official press office, according to internal FBI memos that current Director Kash Patel delivered to Congress this week.
While Richman was known to have been publicly quoted in news stories as an advocate for Comey, he admitted to agents — who were part of the FBI’s Arctic Haze classified leaks inquiry — that he was given access by Comey to what turned out to be highly classified information up to the SCI level and sometimes provided information to reporters on an anonymous basis.
Read the full report from Just The News here.
Breaking: Comey’s media mole told FBI he shaped Russia narrative, needed ‘discount’ to deny leaking intel https://t.co/ynZuXSBRCT
— Just the News (@JustTheNews) August 13, 2025
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