New Investigation Into Classified Leaks Focusing on James Comey

Bronson Stocking | January 16, 2020 6:19 PM

The Justice Department is investigating leaks of a classified Russian document and the investigation appears to be focusing on whether former FBI director James Comey leaked details about the classified document to reporters, according to The New York Times. The Times, along with The Washington Post, mentioned the classified document in reports back in 2017.

According to The Post, then-chair of the Democratic National Committee Debbie Wasserman Schultz is accused in the Russian document of making reassurances to the Clinton campaign that the FBI's investigation would not go too far into Clinton's misuse of a private server to handle classified information as secretary of state. The Russian document is said to have played a key role in James Comey's decision to bypass the Justice Department by independently announcing that the FBI would not be recommending charges against Mrs. Clinton.

(Via The New York Times)

Law enforcement officials are scrutinizing at least two news articles about the F.B.I. and Mr. Comey, published in The New York Times and The Washington Post in 2017, that mentioned the Russian government document, according to the people familiar with the investigation. Hackers working for Dutch intelligence officials obtained the document and provided it to the F.B.I., and both its existence and the collection of it were highly classified secrets, the people said.
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The investigation into the leaks began in recent months, the people said, but it is not clear whether prosecutors have impaneled a grand jury or how many witnesses they have interviewed. What prompted the inquiry is also unclear, but the Russian document was mentioned in a book published last fall, “Deep State: Trump, the F.B.I., and the Rule of Law” by James B. Stewart, a Times reporter.

Comey was already referred for criminal prosecution by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz for leaking classified memos about his private conversations with the president, but the Justice Department has declined to prosecute. Comey is also the one who signed off on the misleading and inaccurate FISA warrant applications, and Comey also lied about the Steele dossier not being the prime evidence submitted to the FISA courts.