The Department of Justice announced Thursday afternoon attorneys will not pursue the prosecution of fired FBI Director James Comey, despite Comey admitting during Congressional testimony in 2017 he purposely leaked sensitive memos to the media. He was also referred for criminal prosecution by the DOJ Inspector General for leaking classified information.
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz referred former FBI Director James Comey for potential prosecution for leaking classified information, but the Department of Justice has ultimately decided against prosecuting Mr. Comey, according to a source familiar with the deliberations.
— Jake Gibson (@JakeBGibson) August 1, 2019
Fox News has the scoop:
The Justice Department has decided against prosecuting former FBI Director James Comey for leaking classified information following a referral from the department’s inspector general, sources familiar with the deliberations told Fox News.
“Everyone at the DOJ involved in the decision said it wasn’t a close call,” one official said. “They all thought this could not be prosecuted.”
Those memos - which contained confidential information - were about his conversations with President Trump. When Comey was fired, FBI agents went to the former director's house to retrieve them.
"I woke up in the middle of the night on Monday night, because it didn't dawn on me originally, that there might be corroboration for our conversations, might be a tape, my judgement was that I needed to get that out into the public square and so I asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter," Comey said at the time of his testimony in 2017. "I didn't do it myself for a variety of reasons, but asked him to, because I thought that it might prompt the appointment of a Special Counsel. I asked a close friend of mine to do that."
In the meantime, DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz is finalizing his report on the origins of the 2016 presidential election.
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