On Thursday, on Fox News’ America’s Newsroom, former Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) blasted former FBI Director James Comey after it was alleged that Comey wrote a memo that contained the code names and real names of informants for the FBI and took the memo home with him. Chaffetz snapped, “Director Comey was so self-righteous in telling the world that he didn’t leak; he didn’t do sneaky things, and that he knew the law better than anybody else, but when the FBI goes to your home and gets memos, that reveal, evidently — we have to see if this is true —confidential and classified information.”
Fox News host Bill Hemmer started the conversation by noting, “New documents revealing the FBI retrieved several memos, including a secret memo that Comey drafted the night before the agents arrived. Now we’re learning the IG’s office is going through them to see if any improperly contained classified information.”
Chaffetz commented regarding Comey, “I had a one-on-one conversation with him; we talked directly about that. He explained to me you cannot summarize classified information, put it in your own handwriting, and then hold onto it personally. That’s why he was pursuing Hillary Clinton, but it appears he did the very same thing himself.”
Fox’s Chief White House Correspondent John Roberts explained the background of Comey and his memos:
This wasn’t so much a search as it was a pre-arranged interview and handing over of evidence, this all according to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by Judicial Watch … The documents show that a month after he was fired on June 7, 2017, FBI agents went to former FBI Director James Comey’s house to interview him and retrieve evidence including memos that he had written on February 4, March 30, and April 11, believed to be memos that he wrote to memorialize conversations he had with President Trump. Those memos were previously known and discussed at length in Comey’s appearances before Congress. What is new here is a memo that Comey wrote the night before the FBI came to his home. Again, he knew they were coming; a memo dated “Last night at 6:30 p.m. ,” which would have put the date that he wrote it as June 6.
According to the documents obtained by Judicial Watch, the memo from February 4 was two pages long; March 30 two pages, April 11 one page, and then the memo from June 6 was four pages long. Comey also told FBI investigators that there were two other memos he had written about his meeting with the president, or conversations at least, that he could no longer find. Those memos were possibly about a phone conversation that Comey had with the president-elect sometime between January 7, 2017, and Inauguration Day and possibly about a conversation he had with the president on the way to an FBI leadership conference in Leesburg on March 7. Comey described that call as all business, but is not certain whether he memorialized the conversation or not. The Department of Justice Inspector general is investigating whether Comey improperly shared classified information with a professor at Columbia University which was then shared with the press. In a memo dated March 30 the second page was labeled “Secret: No Foreign” which means no foreign access to that information. According to the documents, though, Comey told FBI agents that page had been mislabeled and should have simply read “Unclassified: For Official Use Only.” Some of that information may have involved the genesis of the Russia investigation and the use of the FISA court to begin surveillance of Trump campaign officials.
Chaffetz stated, “Director Comey was so self-righteous in telling the world that he didn’t leak; he didn’t do sneaky things, and that he knew the law better than anybody else, but when the FBI goes to your home and gets memos, that reveal, evidently — we have to see if this is true — confidential and classified information. I mean, one of the allegations in there, Bill, is that there were code names and the real names of people that were informants for the FBI. You can’t just take that information and put it into your own personal — have it personally. You just can’t do that. And how ironic, because that was the allegation against Hillary Clinton: that there was classified information in a non-classified setting. That’s why the Inspector General for the intelligence community made the recommendation to the Department of Justice to pursue an investigation of her.”