Every journalist who has ever been to j-school (yours truly included) is told the story of Woodward and Bernstein and how their trust of a source who they kept anonymous for decades ended up bringing down the Nixon administration. Every journalist has dreams of breaking a story that big. So when the New York Times got a source who read them parts of an alleged James Comey memo suggesting that President Donald Trump wanted the probe into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s Russian ties to stop, they probably didn’t deliberate much before publishing a bombshell which, if true, would severely damage the Trump administration.

2) Both Attorney General Sessions and Vice President Pence were not in attendance when the alleged pressuring occurred, as they had been asked to leave the room.

3) Comey has a reputation in Washington D.C. as a person who documents everything and creates paper trails.

4) Trump fired Comey on May 9th.

Those are the only facts that we can feel confident in right now. Now, here’s what we can assume to be true – but have no proof of as of yet:
1) This Comey memo detailing the meeting between himself and Trump actually does exist. Remember, no one has actually seen this memo – the New York Times had it “read to them” by someone who either had possession of it, or who had seen it. It’s definitely shaky journalism, and any j-school graduate would know better.

So basically, someone Comey knows read a memo written by Comey to a Times reporter. This. Is. Not. Journalism. https://t.co/aUj3qOmwnc

— Tim Pool (@Timcast) May 17, 2017

The excuse will be, of course, that this was just too big to ignore. But the NYT has staked its reputation on this memo actually saying what they reported. It’s a huge risk.