ETHICS/FBI/JAMES COMEY/RUSSIA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump’s statement that he discussed the FBI’s Russia investigation with former Director James Comey has raised red flags among legal experts who said such conversations would be improper.
‘There generally shouldn’t be communications about pending investigations and if you need an explanation why, see: Watergate, basically,’ said Kathleen Clark, an ethics expert at Washington University’s School of Law.
Former federal prosecutors and government ethics experts said the president and FBI director should never discuss pending investigations, at least in the way Trump described it in an exclusive interview Thursday [5-11-17] with NBC News’ Lester Holt.
While there are many unanswered questions about what actually transpired between Trump and Comey, experts said the alleged conversations raise the issue of potential intimidation and conflicts of interest that those very rules are designed to prevent.”
-Alex Seitz-Wald, “Experts: Trump’s Alleged Conversations With Comey Improper,” NBC News, May 12, 2017 7:38am