President Donald Trump again accused former FBI director James Comey of leaking classified information in his memos to Columbia law professor Daniel Richman, who then leaked it to the media.
“He illegally leaked CLASSIFIED INFORMATION but doesn’t understand what he did or how serious it is,” Trump wrote. “He lied all over the place to cover it up. He’s either very sick or very dumb.”
Comey has denied leaking classified information, asserting that the FBI only classified material in his memos after he shared the contents with the media.
“Sometime after I was fired, the FBI apparently made a decision that there were some words in at least two of the memos, maybe one, I think two, that were diplomatically sensitive,” he told Fox News anchor Bret Baier in an interview on Thursday. And so, my lawyers returned them to the FBI.”
In his interview with Anderson Cooper, Comey disputed that he was a leaker, defining a “leak” narrowly as “an unauthorized disclosure of classified information” despite his unilateral decision to leak the contents of a government document to the media.
“Is everybody believing what is going on. James Comey can’t define what a leak is,” Trump wrote in response.