Days after the president suggested he has secret recordings of Oval Office conversations with former FBI Director James Comey, the former FBI director said under oath that he woke up in the middle of the night and decided to orchestrate a leak about his memos on meetings with the president.

"I asked a friend of mine to share the content of a memo with the reporter, 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 a special counsel," Comey said. 

Comey said he handed over the memos to a friend because he had press staked out at his driveway and if he walked outside his house and gave it to the press, it would have been like "feeding seagulls at the beach."

The friend is Columbia Law Professor Dan Richman, a close personal friend of Comey, friends of Richman confirm to NBC News. 

— Jane C. Timm