Donald Trump to file legal complaint against James Comey over release of damning memos

Donald Trump's private lawyer is planning to file a legal complaint against James Comey over the former FBI director’s release of memos to the public that detailed his conversations with the President.

During a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, Mr Comey said he believed that Mr Trump had ordered him to drop a criminal investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

Mr Comey had detailed this interaction in a memo, writing that the President told him: "I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”

Mr Comey told the Senate committee that he felt he needed to get this information "out into the public square. So I asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter.” The friend was later identified as Daniel Richman, a professor at Columbia Law School.

Mr Flynn was forced to resign from his post in February after it was revealed that he had misled Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with a Russian official. The President fired Mr Comey last month.

According to CNN, Mr Trump's outside counsel Marc Kasowitz is planning to file a complaint against  Mr Comey with the Justice Department Inspector General and the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Mr Kasowitz said yesterday following the hearing that Mr Comey could be investigated for leaking information, and suggested he may have lied in his sworn Senate testimony.

Mr Comey has said that the memos he wrote were unclassified. Disseminating unclassified information is generally not considered leaking, CNN said, and Mr Trump did not assert executive privilege over Mr Comey's testimony.

But the President has accused Mr Comey of being a ‘leaker’ anyway.

"Despite so many false statements and lies, total and complete vindication...and WOW, Comey is a leaker!” Mr Trump wrote in an early morning tweet on Friday, the day after the Senate hearing.