Lindsey Graham Goes Off on IG's 'Stunning & Unprecedented Rebuke' of Comey, Predicts More To Come
South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham came down hard Thursday on James Comey after a report from the Justice Department’s inspector general accused the former FBI director of violating his responsibilities as a top law enforcement officer.
In May 2017, Comey provided a memo he’d written detailing private discussions with Donald Trump to a friend who was also his attorney.
That friend then leaked the memo to The New York Times.
Comey, for his part, has admitted to orchestrating this series of events in the hope that an independent counsel would be appointed to investigate allegations of collusion between Trump’s 2016 campaign and the Russian government.
The independent counsel, Robert Mueller, was eventually appointed. But despite a two-year investigation, Mueller found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
The inspector general’s report, meanwhile, made it clear Comey had stepped over the line.
“The responsibility to protect sensitive law enforcement information falls in large part to the employees of the FBI who have access to it through their daily duties,” the IG’s report concluded.
“On occasion, some of these employees may disagree with decisions by prosecutors, judges, or higher ranking FBI and Department officials about the actions to take or not take in criminal and counterintelligence matters,” it said. “They may even, in some situations, distrust the legitimacy of those supervisory, prosecutorial, or judicial decisions. But even when these employees believe that their most strongly-held personal convictions might be served by an unauthorized disclosure, the FBI depends on them not to disclose sensitive information.
“Former Director Comey failed to live up to this responsibility. By not safeguarding sensitive information obtained during the course of his FBI employment, and by using it to create public pressure for official action, Comey set a dangerous example for the over 35,000 current FBI employees — and the many thousands more former FBI employees — who similarly have access to or knowledge of non-public information.”
The report as a whole was a “stunning and unprecedented rebuke” of Comey, Graham said Thursday. And he thinks there’s more to come.
“The Inspector General’s report is a stunning and unprecedented rebuke of a former Director of the FBI,” the South Carolina Republican tweeted.
The Inspector General’s report is a stunning and unprecedented rebuke of a former Director of the FBI.
— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) August 29, 2019
“This is the first of what I expect will be several more ugly and damning rebukes of senior DOJ and FBI officials regarding their actions and biases toward the Trump campaign of 2016,” he wrote in a follow-up post.
This is the first of what I expect will be several more ugly and damning rebukes of senior DOJ and FBI officials regarding their actions and biases toward the Trump campaign of 2016.
— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) August 29, 2019
Graham went on to thank DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz for “documenting the off-the-rails behavior of Mr. Comey regarding the leaking of law enforcement materials to the media.”
I appreciate the time and effort Mr. Horowitz and his team spent documenting the off-the-rails behavior of Mr. Comey regarding the leaking of law enforcement materials to the media.
— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) August 29, 2019
Comey, meanwhile, has tried to frame the IG report in a different way.
DOJ IG “found no evidence that Comey or his attorneys released any of the classified information contained in any of the memos to members of the media.” I don’t need a public apology from those who defamed me, but a quick message with a “sorry we lied about you” would be nice.
— James Comey (@Comey) August 29, 2019
And to all those who’ve spent two years talking about me “going to jail” or being a “liar and a leaker”—ask yourselves why you still trust people who gave you bad info for so long, including the president.
— James Comey (@Comey) August 29, 2019
“And to all those who’ve spent two years talking about me “going to jail” or being a ‘liar and a leaker’ — ask yourselves why you still trust people who gave you bad info for so long, including the president,” he tweeted.
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