Former FBI Director James Comey faces a Department of Justice investigation after leaking classified information to a friend, reports say.
Comey redacted parts he believed were sensitive, but other sections he did not redact were later labeled classified.
The news is yet another win for President Trump, who has pulled no punches while talking about Comey on Twitter and at public events.
According to The Wall Street Journal:
“At least two of the memos that former FBI Director James Comey gave to a friend outside of the government contained information that officials now consider classified, according to people familiar with the matter, prompting a review by the Justice Department’s internal watchdog.
Of those two memos, Mr. Comey himself redacted elements of one that he knew to be classified to protect secrets before he handed the documents over to his friend. He determined at the time that another memo contained no classified information, but after he left the Federal Bureau of Investigation, bureau officials upgraded it to “confidential,” the lowest level of classification.
The Justice Department inspector general is now conducting an investigation into classification issues related to the Comey memos, according to a person familiar with the matter. Mr. Comey has said he considered the memos personal rather than government documents. He has told Congress that he wrote them and authorized their release to the media “as a private citizen.”
