The White House on Wednesday launched another harsh attack on James Comey — the second day in a row the administration put the fired former FBI director in its crosshairs.
Spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that Comey’s leaking of a memo to The New York Times recounting how President Trump had pressured him to end the feds’ probe into Russia’s election meddling was illegal.
“They [memos] were created on an FBI computer. They clearly follow the protocol of an official FBI document,” she replied when a reporter noted the memo was not classified.
“Leaking on a sensitive case regardless of classification violates federal laws including the privacy act, standard FBI employment agreement and non-disclosure agreement, all personnel must sign. I think that’s pretty clean and clear that that would be a violation,” she said during a briefing at the White House.
Asked if Comey should be prosecuted, she continued, “That’s not up to me to decide. I’m certainly not an attorney, but I think that the facts of the case are very clear.”
Peter Baker, a reporter for The Times, tweeted during the briefing that Comey never physically handed over any memos.
“To be precise, portions of one were read to a reporter but memo itself was not provided,” he wrote.
But Sanders doubled down on her harsh criticism, echoing remarks made on Tuesday, suggesting that the Justice Department could open an investigation into Comey’s behavior.
“The Department of Justice has to look into any allegations of whether or not something is illegal or not. What I’ve said and what I’m talking about are facts,” she said.
“James Comey leaking of information, questionable statements under oath, politicizing an investigation, those are real reasons for why he was fired and the president’s decision was 100 percent right which we’ve said multiple times over and over. And in fact, I think the more and more we learn the more that’s been vindicated.”
The attacks on Comey come as special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia and possible collusion with the Trump campaign is heating up.
A report in Axios on Wednesday said that Trump frequently rages to aides about Comey and Mueller, who was appointed to handle the investigation after the president fired Comey over his handling of the Russia probe.