Copies of the memos written by former FBI Director James Comey are photographed in Washington, Thursday, April 19, 2018. President Donald Trump told former FBI Director James Comey that he had serious... (Associated Press) 
 
 Copies of the memos written by former FBI Director James Comey are photographed in Washington, Thursday, April 19, 2018. President Donald Trump told former FBI Director James Comey that he had serious concerns about the judgment of his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, according to memos... (Associated Press) 
 
 WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump told former FBI Director James Comey that he had serious concerns about the judgment of his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, and his chief of staff asked days later if Flynn's communications were being monitored under a secret surveillance warrant, according to memos maintained by Comey and obtained by The Associated Press. 
 
 The 15 pages of documents contain new details about a series of interactions with Trump that Comey found so unnerving that he documented them in writing. Those encounters in the weeks before Comey's May 2017 firing include a Trump Tower discussion involving allegations of prostitutes and Russia, a White House dinner at which Comey says Trump asked him for his loyalty and a private Oval Office discussion where the ex-FBI head says the president asked him to end an investigation into Flynn. 
 
 The documents had been eagerly anticipated since their existence was first revealed last year, especially since Comey's interactions with Trump are part of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into whether the president sought to obstruct justice. The memos have been turned over to Mueller. 
 
 Comey has said publicly that, "I knew there might come a day when I would need a record of what had happened, not just to defend myself, but to defend the FBI and our integrity as an institution and the independence of our investigative function." 
 
 According to one memo, Trump complained about Flynn at a private January 2017 dinner with Comey, saying "the guy has serious judgment issues." He then blamed Flynn for a delay in returning the congratulatory call of an international leader, telling Comey he would be upset if he had to wait six days for a returned phone call. 
 
 "I did not comment at any point during this topic and there was no mention or acknowledgment of any FBI interest in or contact with General Flynn," Comey wrote. 
 
 At that point, the FBI had already interviewed Flynn about his contacts with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, and the Justice Department had already warned White House officials that they were concerned Flynn was vulnerable to blackmail. 
 
 Flynn was fired February 13, 2017, after White House officials said he had misled them about his Russian contacts during the transition period. In a separate memo, Comey says Trump cleared the Oval Office of other officials, encouraged him to let the investigation into Flynn go and called him a good guy. 
 
 The memos reveal that days before Flynn's firing, then-White House chief of staff Reince Priebus asked Comey if Flynn's communications were being monitored under a secret surveillance warrant. 
 
 "Do you have a FISA order on Mike Flynn?" Priebus asked Comey, according to the memos, referring to an order under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. 
 
 Comey said he "paused for a few seconds and then said that I would answer here, but that this illustrated the kind of question that had been asked and answered through established channels." 
 
 Comey's response is redacted on the unclassified memos. 
 
 The memos were provided to Congress earlier Thursday as House Republicans escalated criticism of the Justice Department, threatening to subpoena the documents and questioning officials. In a letter sent to three Republican House committee chairmen Thursday evening, Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd wrote that the department was sending a classified version of the memos and an unclassified version. The department released Boyd's letter publicly but did not release the memos. 
 
 Justice officials had allowed some lawmakers to view the memos but had never provided copies to Congress. Boyd wrote that the department had also provided the memos to several Senate committees. 
 
 Comey is on a publicity tour to promote his new book, "A Higher Loyalty." He revealed last year that he had written the memos after conversations with Trump. 
 
 Boyd wrote in the letter that the department "consulted the relevant parties" and concluded that releasing the memos would not adversely affect any ongoing investigations. Special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating potential ties between Russia and Trump's 2016 campaign as well as possible obstruction of justice by the president. 
 
 Boyd said the decision to allow the release of the memos "does not alter the department's traditional obligation to protect from public disclosure witness statements and other documents obtained during an ongoing investigation." 
 
 Comey said in an interview Thursday with CNN that he's "fine" with the Justice Department turning his memos over to Congress. 
 
 "I think what folks will see if they get to see the memos is I've been consistent since the very beginning, right after my encounters with President Trump, and I'm consistent in the book and tried to be transparent in the book as well," he said. 
 
 Last week, the GOP chairmen of three House committees demanded the memos by Monday. The Justice Department asked for more time, and the lawmakers agreed. 
 
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 Associated Press writers Chad Day and Tom LoBianco contributed to this report. 
 
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 Link to the memos: 
 
 http://apne.ws/dwhMe9R ||||| More than half of the memos former FBI Director James Comey wrote as personal recollections of his conversations with President Trump about the Russia investigation have been determined to contain classified information, according to interviews with officials familiar with the documents. 
 
 This revelation raises the possibility that Comey broke his own agency’s rules and ignored the same security protocol that he publicly criticized Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonCuomo: Kavanaugh, Gorsuch are 'going to reverse Roe v. Wade' Hillary Clinton on women in politics: I know how 'likable you all are' Democrats trying to defeat Roy Moore created fake online campaign: report MORE over in the waning days of the 2016 presidential election. 
 
 Comey testified last month before the Senate Intelligence Committee that he considered the memos to be personal documents and that he shared at least one of them with a friend. He asked that friend, a law professor at Columbia University, to leak information from one memo to the news media in hopes of increasing pressure to get a special prosecutor named in the Russia case after Comey was fired as FBI director. 
 
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 “So you didn’t consider your memo or your sense of that conversation to be a government document?” Sen. Roy Blunt Roy Dean BluntSenators warm to immigration deal as shutdown solution Election agency prepares to tackle foreign interference Senate GOP: We need clarity from Trump on border demands MORE (R-Mo.) asked Comey on June 8. “You considered it to be, somehow, your own personal document that you could share to the media as you wanted through a friend?” 
 
 “Correct,” Comey answered. “I understood this to be my recollection recorded of my conversation with the president. As a private citizen, I thought it important to get it out.” 
 
 Comey insisted in his testimony he believed his personal memos were unclassified, though he hinted one or two documents he created might have been contained classified information. 
 
 “I immediately prepared an unclassified memo of the conversation about Flynn and discussed the matter with FBI senior leadership,” he testified about the one memo he later leaked about former national security adviser Michael Flynn. 
 
 He added, “My view was that the content of those unclassified memorialization of those conversations was my recollection recorded.” 
 
 But when the seven memos Comey wrote regarding his nine conversations with Trump about Russia earlier this year were shown to Congress in recent days, the FBI claimed all were, in fact, deemed to be government documents. 
 
 While the Comey memos have been previously reported, this is the first time there has been a number connected to the amount of memos the ex-FBI chief wrote. 
 
 Four of the memos had markings making clear they contained information classified at the secret or confidential level, according to officials directly familiar with the matter. 
 
 A spokesman for the FBI on Sunday declined to comment. 
 
 FBI policy forbids any agent from releasing classified information or any information from ongoing investigations or sensitive operations without prior written permission, and it mandates that all records created during official duties are considered to be government property. 
 
 “Unauthorized disclosure, misuse, or negligent handling of information contained in the files, electronic or paper, of the FBI or which I may acquire as an employee of the FBI could impair national security, place human life in jeopardy, result in the denial of due process, prevent the FBI from effectively discharging its responsibilities, or violate federal law,” states the agreement all FBI agents sign. 
 
 It adds that “all information acquired by me in connection with my official duties with the FBI and all official material to which I have access remain the property of the United States of America” and that an agent “will not reveal, by any means, any information or material from or related to FBI files or any other information acquired by virtue of my official employment to any unauthorized recipient without prior official written authorization by the FBI.” 
 
 Comey indicated in his testimony that the memos were in his possession when he left the bureau, leaving him in a position to leak one of them through his friend to the media. But he testified that he has since turned them over to Robert Mueller, a former FBI chief who is now spearheading the investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the presidential race. 
 
 It is not clear whether Comey as director signed the same agreement as his agents, but the contract is considered the official policy of the bureau. It was also unclear when the documents were shown to Congress whether the information deemed secret or confidential was classified at the time Comey wrote the memos or determined so afterward, the sources said. 
 
 Congressional investigators had already begun examining whether Comey’s creation, storage and sharing of the memos violated FBI rules, but the revelation that four of the seven memos included some sort of classified information opens a new door of inquiry into whether classified information was mishandled, improperly stored or improperly shared. 
 
 That was the same issue for which the FBI investigated Clinton, a former secretary of State in the Obama administration, in 2015 and 2016 under Comey. Clinton used a private email server during her tenure that at times contained classified material. 
 
 Comey ultimately concluded in July 2016 that Clinton’s email practices were reckless, but that he could not recommend prosecution because FBI agents had failed to find enough evidence that she intended to violate felony statutes prohibiting the transmission of classified information through insecure practices. Clinton at the time was the Democratic nominee for president. 
 
 “Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of the classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information," he said in a decision panned by Republicans and embraced by Democrats. 
 
 Now, congressional investigators are likely to turn their attention to the same issues to determine if Comey mishandled any classified information in his personal memos. 
 
 In order to make an assessment, congressional investigators will have to tackle key questions, such as where and how the memos were created, including whether they were written on an insecure computer or notepad; where and how the memos were stored, such as inside Comey's home, in a briefcase or on an insecure laptop; whether any memos were shown to private individuals without a security clearance and whether those memos contained any classified information; and when was it determined by the government that the memos contained classified information — before Comey took them and shared one or after. 
 
 One avenue for answering those questions is for a panel like Senate Intelligence, House Intelligence or Senate Judiciary to refer the matter to the Justice Department’s internal watchdog, the inspector general, or to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and its inspector general, aides said.
– Former FBI chief James Comey's long-anticipated memos on his private meetings with President Trump were released to Congress on Thursday after House Republicans seeking to clear the president of obstruction of justice allegations threatened to subpoena the documents. Comey has said he kept a detailed record of his conversations with the president because he worried Trump would end up lying about them some day. Some highlights from the 15 pages of documents, which were obtained by the AP: "We need to go after the reporters." Comey said Trump discussed jailing reporters in a Feb. 2017 conversation about preventing leaks. Comey said he told Trump: "I was eager to find leakers and would like to nail one to the door as a message. I said something about it being difficult and he replied that we need to go after the reporters, and referred to the fact that 10 or 15 years ago we put them in jail to find out what they know, and it worked." "Beautiful hookers." Comey said Trump, fixated on lewd allegations in a Russia dossier, told him Putin had bragged about the beauty of Russian prostitutes. The president "said 'the hookers thing' is nonsense, but that Putin had told him 'we have some of the most beautiful hookers in the world,'" he wrote. Comey wrote that the president said it "really bothered him" if his wife had any doubt about the "Golden Showers thing." Flynn's "serious judgment issues." Comey said that at a Jan. 2017 dinner, Trump complained that national security adviser Michael Flynn had some "serious judgment issues." "I did not comment at any point during this topic and there was no mention or acknowledgment of any FBI interest in or contact with General Flynn," Comey wrote. Question about a Flynn warrant. Comey said days before Flynn's firing on Feb. 13, 2017, then-White House chief of staff Reince Priebus asked him if the adviser's communications were being monitored under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Comey's response is redacted in the unclassified version of the memos. Trump claimed to be vindicated after the documents were released, the Washington Post reports. "James Comey Memos just out and show clearly that there was NO COLLUSION and NO OBSTRUCTION," he tweeted. "Also, he leaked classified information. WOW! Will the Witch Hunt continue?" Comey told CNN that he had no problem with memos being turned over to Congress and said they were consistent with what he wrote in his memoir. "I think what folks will see if they get to see the memos is I've been consistent since the very beginning, right after my encounters with President Trump," he said.