Trump lawyer rejects Comey testimony, hints at prosecution

WASHINGTON

President Donald Trump's private lawyer denied bombshell allegations made by the sacked FBI director James Comey on Thursday, suggesting the ousted lawman should be prosecuted for leaking "privileged information."

The president "never told Mr Comey 'I need loyalty, I expect loyalty' in form or substance," attorney Marc Kasowitz said, rejecting a key allegation made by the former FBI director before a Senate panel.

Dismissing key parts of Comey's damning testimony while claiming others as a win for the president, Kasowitz also suggested Comey may face prosecution.

"Today, Mr Comey admitted that he leaked to friends his purported memos of these privileged conversations, one of which he testified was classified," the lawyer said.

"We will leave it the appropriate authorities to determine whether this leak should be investigated along with all those others being investigated."

Legal experts disagreed about whether Comey crossed any legal or ethical lines by leaking his memo of the conversations through a "friend," who was identified as a Columbia University law professor.

University of Texas constitutional and national security law professor Stephen Vladeck said Comey was within his rights.

"Did #Comey's orchestration of the memo leak break the law? In a word, no," Vladeck wrote on Twitter.

"Unless memo includes 'information relating to the national defence' (& no indication it did), then leak doesn't violate Espionage Act."

Vladeck added there is no law against "leaks" that the only potential legal violation was of a "federal conversion-of-property statute," and that prosecuting under that law would be only a remote possibility.

However, Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor, said Comey's decision to leak the memo was "deeply troubling from a professional and ethical standpoint."

Comey's memos were "arguably government documents," he said in a blog post, adding that "the admission of leaking the memos is problematic given the overall controversy involving leakers undermining the administration."

That led to "a curious scene of a former director leaking material against the president after the president repeatedly asked him to crack down on leakers."

Turley said that a federal law makes it a crime "to steal, sell, or convey "any record, voucher, money, or thing of value of the United States or of any department or agency thereof."

However, Vladeck argued that Comey's leak could not fall under that law because "the memo has no pecuniary value."

"There may be ethical issues (which I'll leave to the ethics experts)," he added. "But any legal argument is a real stretch."