Comey pulled the same dishonet "literally true" crap when he told Trump, three times, that Trump was not a target. Comey admitted under oath that what he said could be taken as misleading, because of couse the scope of the investigation would necessarily involve looking at Trump personally. There was dissent in the IC about whether or not to tell Trump the truth rather than mislad him with a literal truth, and they decided to mislead Trump.
This is another iteration of exactly the same thing.
COMEY: Was it unanimous? One of the members of the leadership team had a view that, although it was technically true, we did not have a counterintelligence file case open on then-President-elect Trump.His concern was, because we're looking at the potential -- again, that's the subject of the investigation -- coordination between the campaign and Russia, because it was President Trump -- President-elect Trump's campaign, this person's view was, inevitably, his behavior, his conduct will fall within the scope of that work.
And so he was reluctant to make the statement that I made. I disagreed. I thought it was fair to say what was literally true: There is not a counterintelligence investigation of Mr. Trump. And I decided, in the moment, to say it, given the nature of our conversation.