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The
Justice Department's Office of Inspector General said Comey
asked a friend to share the contents of a memo with the New York
Times to pressure the department to launch an independent
investigation into his conversations with President Donald
Trump.
In the memo, Comey described a meeting in which Trump allegedly
asked him to drop the FBI's investigation into Michael Flynn,
who at the time was his national security adviser. Flynn has
since pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations
with Russian officials.
Comey signed off on an investigation into the Trump campaign's
possible ties to Russia during the 2016 election and later
emerged as a prominent critic of the president after Trump fired
him in May 2017. Trump and many of his allies say that
investigation should never have begun.
The Justice Department appointed a special counsel, Robert
Mueller, to handle the investigation after Comey left. That
probe unearthed numerous contacts between the campaign and
Russian officials but concluded that there was not enough
evidence to establish a criminal conspiracy.
Mueller's final report did not reach a conclusion as to whether
Trump's efforts to interfere with the probe amounted to criminal
obstruction of justice, but it also did not exonerate the
president. Attorney General William Barr concluded that he did
not see enough evidence to bring obstruction charges.
The Inspector General said on Thursday that while Comey's memo
did not contain classified material, he set a dangerous example
when he shared sensitive information to create public pressure
for official action.
"Were current or former FBI employees to follow the former
Director's example and disclose sensitive information in service
of their own strongly held personal convictions, the FBI would
be unable to dispatch its law enforcement duties properly," the
report said.
Comey said on Twitter that people who have accused him of
sharing classified information should apologize.
"To all those who've spent two years talking about me 'going to
jail' or being a 'liar and a leaker'—ask yourselves why you
still trust people who gave you bad info for so long, including
the president," he said.
SECOND TIME
It is the second time Comey has been criticized by the Inspector
General's office, which concluded last year that he made a
"serious error of judgment" when he announced shortly before the
2016 election that he was re-opening an investigation into
Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton's use of a private e-mail
server when she was secretary of State.
Trump said on Thursday: "Perhaps never in the history of our
Country has someone been more thoroughly disgraced and
excoriated than James Comey in the just released Inspector
General's Report. He should be ashamed of himself!"
White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham called Comey a "liar
and a leaker" and said his decision to share information with
the press led to a "baseless, politically motivated, two-year
witch hunt."
Comey wrote seven memos during the first few months of Trump's
presidency, detailing one-on-one meetings in which Comey says
Trump demanded loyalty and tried to influence the actions of the
FBI, which is supposed to enforce the law in an impartial
manner.
The Inspector General's report said Comey should not have held
on to the memos after he was fired because they were official
FBI documents. Comey gave one of them to his friend Dan Richman
and told him to share it with a New York Times reporter,
according to the report. Richman declined to comment.
Congress made redacted versions of those memos public last year.
FBI spokesman Brian Hale said the report underscored the need
for all agency employees, regardless of position, to obey rules
about official records. The Justice Department declined to
comment.
Some Republicans said the Inspector General's report provides
more evidence that the FBI was motivated by political
considerations when it started investigating the Trump
campaign's contacts with Russia.
"This is the first of what I expect will be several more ugly
and damning rebukes of senior DOJ and FBI officials regarding
their actions and biases toward the Trump campaign of 2016,"
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham said in a
statement.
The Inspector General's office is currently examining the FBI's
conduct during the investigation, and Barr is also overseeing
two inquiries into the origins of the Mueller probe: one led by
John Durham, the top federal prosecutor in Connecticut, and
another involving senior intelligence officials.
Although the Justice Department will not prosecute Comey, he
could face other disciplinary action because the Inspector
General's report has been referred to the FBI and the
department's Office of Professional Responsibility, which
investigates employee misconduct.
Democrats in Congress are split as to whether Trump should be
impeached for the actions detailed in Mueller's report, while
Republicans have largely stood by the president.
(Reporting by Andy Sullivan; Additional reporting by Nathan
Layne in New York; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall and Leslie Adler)
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