Ex-FBI Director James Comey testified before a Senate committee that he orchestrated the leak of a memo he wrote about his conversation with President Trump to a reporter.

Comey acknowledged the leak of his own memo to a law professor pal after Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) asked if he ever shared any of the memos he had written about conversations with Trump outside of the Justice Department.

“My judgment was, 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,” Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee. “[I] didn’t do it myself for a variety of reasons, but I asked him to, because I thought, that might prompt the appointment of the special counsel.”

The New York Times published a story about the memo, which said Trump had asked him to drop the FBI’s probe into former national security adviser Mike Flynn.

Comey said he gave the memo, which did not contain classified information, to Daniel Richman, a friend who is a Columbia Law School professor and longtime adviser.

Richman confirmed to the Huffington Post that he was the “close friend” who shared the contents of the memo.

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