Well, well. What do we have here?
According to a Friday report in the Wall Street Journal, Former FBI Director Comey passed now classified information to people outside of the government who did not have proper security clearances.
A total of four memos were passed to Daniel Richman, a friend of Comey’s and a former federal prosecutor who is now a professor at Columbia Law School, people familiar with the matter said,” reports the WSJ. When Comey passed the memos to Richman, three memos were considered unclassified. The fourth was.
Comey redacted information he knew would be classified from one of four memos. This memo was classified “confidential” after Comey left the FBI.
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.”Mr. Comey gave four total memos to his friend Daniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor who is now a professor at Columbia Law School, people familiar with the matter said. Three were considered unclassified at the time and one was classified.As FBI director, Mr. Comey had the legal authority to determine what bureau information was classified and what wasn’t. Once he left government, however, the determination fell to other officials.
Before the WSJ report was released, Trump needled Comey on Twitter:
Out promoting his new book, Comey has been given a national platform to criticize Trump, who fired him last year.
Hillary sent classified information through a private email address and bathroom server for years without consequence. Even her housekeeper had access to classified and sensitive information.
So, Comey should be just fine.
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