Justice Department ‘is investigating whether James Comey illegally leaked classified information to the media’ during the Clinton email probe
The Justice Department has opened an investigation into whether former FBI Director James Comey illegally leaked classified information to the media during the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server, according to a new report.
The active investigation centers on media leaks to the New York Times and the Washington Post in early 2017, describing a secret Russian document that played a role in the Clinton investigation, people familiar with the matter told the Times.
In 2016, Dutch intelligence hacked Russian computers and obtained the document, which they shared with the FBI.
The document was a purported Russian intelligence analysis of an email exchange between Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, then head of the Democratic National Committee, and Leonard Benardo, who worked with the George Soros-founded group Open Society Foundations.
The Russian summary said that Schultz had assured Benardo that then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch wouldn’t let the Clinton email investigation go too far, implying that the Obama administration would protect Clinton.
The Post and the Times reported on the Russian document in 2017, and the Post, citing ‘people familiar with its contents,’ said that it ‘has long been viewed within the FBI as unreliable and possibly a fake’ by Russians.
The new investigation is examining whether Comey was one of the ‘people familiar with the matter,’ and disclosed information about the highly classified document in a possible effort to both discredit it and defend his actions in the Clinton investigation.
Developing story, check back for updates.
