Former FBI Director James Comey got a bit of good news this week as the Justice Department decided not to charge him over leaking his memos, despite a criminal referral from the department’s watchdog. But the nation’s one-time top cop is not out of the woods yet.
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who concluded that Comey leaked classified information and showed a lack of candor, had his criminal referral rejected by lawyers at the department. But the leak inquiry was just a narrow slice of the broader investigation that Horowitz launched in March of last year into allegations of wrongdoing at the department and the FBI related to the use of the dossier, compiled by British ex-spy Christopher Steele, to obtain warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to surveil Trump’s campaign.
Comey, who was fired by President Trump more than two years ago and admitted he released memos on his conversations with Trump to the media soon after in order to spark the appointment of a special counsel, expressed confidence Thursday, saying, “I love transparency … I’m confident the results of all IG reports will show honest public servants worked hard to protect this country from a threat this president and his enablers won’t acknowledge.”
Trump gave Attorney General William Barr, who has said that “spying did occur” against the Trump campaign, the authority to declassify information as he examines the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation and how the FBI and the Justice Department behaved.
Barr is likely looking not just at FISA-related matters but at a variety of other areas, such as FBI informant and Cambridge University professor Stefan Halper reaching out to members of the Trump campaign. Barr selected U.S. Attorney John Durham, who has years of experience investigating corruption at the FBI and intelligence issues at the CIA and is widely seen as dogged and fair, as the point man for that inquiry.
Comey, who headed up the FBI during the launch of the Trump-Russia investigation, is a likely target of Barr and Durham. He signed three of the four FISA applications and renewals targeting former Trump campaign associate Carter Page, and was fired before the final FISA renewal in June 2017.
Comey defended the FBI’s use of the Steele dossier earlier this year, saying the FBI tried to see how much of the unverified information could be replicated. But he admitted the dossier wasn’t verified when it was used in the three FISA filings he signed off on, saying “that work was ongoing when I was fired.”
In a column for The Hill, contributor John Solomon cited a source who said everyone involved in the Trump-Russia investigation and the use of the dossier remains under scrutiny, and noted other sources said Comey and others still face legal jeopardy from Horowitz, Barr, and Durham.
“He’s got a day of reckoning coming on leaking, but there is more ahead besides this,” Solomon said on Fox News earlier this week. “I can also report that there will be a very damning report that will shame James Comey.”
And he promised that “this report will not show James Comey as a rule follower — he’ll be a rule breaker.”
“He signed the first FISA and that’s going to turn out to be a misleading or fraudulent FISA,” Solomon said.
Solomon said Barr and Durham spell trouble for Comey, too.
The report from Horowitz is expected to be released at about Labor Day, and the inquiry by Barr and Durham continues apace.
