President Donald Trump marveled at a report that said his fired FBI Director James Comey’s memos contained classified information, a revelation that could get the ex-government official in trouble.
‘James Comey leaked CLASSIFIED INFORMATION to the media. That is so illegal!’ Trump wrote Monday morning, shortly after retweeting a Fox News story that reported the allegation.
It was the Hill newspaper, on Sunday night, that first broke the story that most of the memos written by the former FBI chief contained classified information, a welcome distraction for the president as his son Donald Trump Jr. comes under fire for meeting with a Kremlin-associated lawyer last year.
Trump Jr. didn’t tell the New York Times, initially, that he set up the meeting to get compromising information on his father’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.
If the Hill’s sources are correct, it means Comey may have violated federal protocols on the handling of classified information for the memos he wrote recounting conversations he had with President Trump.
Comey wrote seven memos overall, four of which have been judged to contain classified information.
The fired FBI boss shared one of the memos with reporters by leaking it through a Columbia University lawyer friend, although Trump may have jumped the gun, as it is not known if the one that was leaked to the media contained classified information.
The irony is that Comey publicly criticized Hillary Clinton for her handling of classified information during the bureau’s investigation into the private email server she maintained while she was secretary of state.
Comey, who was fired by Trump in May, said in congressional testimony last month that he gave a memo describing his conversations with Trump to a close friend and told him to share its contents with a reporter.