Nation: Comey criticized over Trump memo.
WASHINGTON » Former FBI Director James Comey violated policy by disclosing memos about his interactions with President Donald Trump to people outside the bureau, a blistering Justice Department inspector general report released Thursday said. The report admonished him for setting “a dangerous example” for officials with access to government secrets.
The inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, faulted Comey for handing the memos over to his lawyers, one of whom provided the contents of one document to a New York Times reporter at Comey’s request. Though officials retroactively determined that they contained classified information, prosecutors declined to charge Comey with illegally disclosing the material.
Comey has said he helped make the information public in part to bring about the appointment of a special counsel.
“Comey violated FBI policy and the requirements of his FBI employment agreement when he chose this path,” the report said.
Trump wasted little time using the report’s conclusions to attack Comey, whom the president fired abruptly in 2017 and partly blames for opening the Russia investigation. “He should be ashamed of himself!” T r um p wrote on Tw itter , dismissing Comey as “thoroughly d i sg ra c ed and excoriated” by the report.
The White House press secretar y, Stephanie Grisham, accused Comey in a statement of being “a proven liar and leaker,” adding that he “disgraced himself and his office to further a personal political agenda, and this report further confirms that fact.”
But the inspector general report found no evidence that Comey had lied during his interviews or that politics had inf luenced his efforts to prompt the appointment of a special counsel.
The report is the latest chapter in the story of Comey, who was castigated last year as part of a broader inspector general’s investigation that examined his handling of the Hillary Clinton email inquiry during the 2016 presidential campaign. In trying to protect the FBI, the earlier report said, Comey instead damaged its reputation.
Comey re sponded Thursday by noting that the new report found he had broken no laws and criticizing those who had accused him of lying or leaking information.