Former FBI Director James Comey has been found to have violated FBI policies by releasing memos featuring classified information. The findings were announced in a report by the internal watchdog for the Justice Department.
The inspector general determined Comey’s leaks of memos from meetings with President Donald Trump set a “dangerous example” for FBI employees to “achieve a personally desired outcome.”
Ultimately, however, no case was pursued because the FBI determined Comey did not knowingly violated laws regarding classified information.
“By not safeguarding sensitive information obtained during the course of his FBI employment, and by using it to create public pressure for official action, Comey set a dangerous example for the over 35,000 current FBI employees—and the many thousands more former FBI employees—who similarly have access to or knowledge of non-public information,” Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz concluded in his report.
Comey also reportedly failed to inform the FBI that he had further memos kept safely at his home.
While the report concluded Comey violated FBI policy, Comey took to social media to comment about a specific finding that he never gave the classified information to the media.
“I don’t need a public apology from those who defamed me, but a quick message with a “sorry we lied about you” would be nice,” he wrote on Twitter. “And 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.
While the report will certainly lead to more discussion about how Comey handled his role in any investigation and supporters of President Trump will continue to use this to discredit Comey’s work, the FBI will not be prosecuting the agency’s former director.
