As The Federalist‘s Mollie Hemingway noted after Comey’s memos were finally made available to the public, the fired FBI director’s account of the briefing of Trump suggested that the entire briefing was a setup from the beginning, and that it was scheduled and held just so it could be leaked to journalists who wanted an excuse to publish a dossier nobody had verified.

In their coordinated response to the full intelligence committee’s findings, committee Democrats defended Clapper, claiming that he broke no laws while acknowledging that he did leak information about the dossier to CNN’s Jake Tapper.

“Evaluated in context, Clapper denied leaking classified information, while acknowledging that, as DNI, he engaged in legitimate discussion of unclassified, non-intelligence information with Tapper,” they concluded.