The FBI’s Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, confirmed late Monday that former FBI director James Comey is under investigation, with investigators looking into whether Comey mishandled classified information when he shared records of his conversations with President Donald Trump with a friend.
Fox News reports that the Justice Department is looking into whether Comey intentionally or unintentionally passed classified information to his friend, Columbia University Professor Daniel Richman, when he sent Richman written “conversation records” that Richman then leaked to members of the press.
Comey wrote the memos after speaking with Trump on several occasions, starting after what Comey called a contentious meeting with Trump in January 2017, right before the president took office. The Justice Department made redacted versions of the memos public, but Comey reportedly shared un-redacted versions with Richman.
Copies of the same memos, released to a Congressional committee, bore markings that indicated those memos were both “confidential” and “classified.”
During his testimony in front of a Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday, Horowitz confirmed that the FBI referred the matter to the Inspector General out of concern that Comey had mishandled classified information.
“We received a referral on that from the FBI,” Horowitz told Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA). “We are handling that referral and we will issue a report when the matter is complete and consistent with the law and rules.”
Back in April, after the memos came to light, Comey hinted that he might be under investigation for his handling of classified documents, but according to Fox, he called the matter “frivolous.”