I needed to get that out into the public square, and so I asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter. Didn’t do it myself for a variety of reasons, but I asked him to because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel.

The former FBI director told lawmakers that after he was fired, he asked a “close friend” to leak to a reporter the contents of one memo he wrote about his interactions with Trump.

Comey said he hoped leaking the memo, which he considered a private document, might spur the appointment of a special counsel to oversee the Russia investigation.

He said he asked a friend, identified as a professor at Columbia Law School, to tell a reporter what was in the memo instead of doing it himself because he was “wary” of all the media attention surrounding his abrupt departure from the FBI.

“The media was camping at the end of my driveway at that point,” Comey said. “I was actually going out of town with my wife to hide. I worried it would be like feeding seagulls at the beach if it was I who gave it to the media, so I asked my friend, ‘Make sure this gets out.’”