Months after he refused to charge Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election for using a private, unauthorized server to transmit classified information, then-FBI Director James Comey’s inner circle used personal email accounts to further a plan to make an "unauthorized disclosure" to journalists, newly declassified memos reveal.
When investigators in a criminal probe codenamed "TROPIC VORTEX" sought permission in 2019 to gain access to those private emails, federal prosecutors turned them down, according to the memos recently uncovered by current FBI Director Kash Patel and declassified for release to Congress by Attorney General Pam Bondi.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington DC "issued a prosecutorial declination decision for TROPIC VORTEX," the FBI memo shutting down the probe stated.
The memos are the latest evidence that FBI agents on the front lines had serious concerns about illegal leaks and abuses of classified information allegedly involving major figures in Washington like Comey, now Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Clinton. The efforts at investigating were repeatedly thwarted.
Witnesses say Comey authorized leaks of classified info
Just the News reported last week that agents gathered eyewitness evidence from Comey’s top lieutenants, including former chief of staff James Rybicki and ex-FBI General Counsel James Baker, that the former FBI chief authorized the leak of classified information to reporters just before the 2016 election. No charges were ever filed.
That probe, which was handled by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham, was centered on the leaks of classified information to The New York Times in October 2016, ahead of the November election in which Republican Donald Trump defeated Democratic Party nominee Clinton.
The memos don’t identify the specific pieces of classified information that were leaked or whether Comey or anyone else was authorized to declassify them for the media.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, told Just the News on Tuesday these newest revelations further validate President Donald Trump’s decision to fire Comey back in 2017.
"“Time and again, the curtain has been pulled back to reveal Comey’s self-serving, ‘rules for thee and not for me’ attitude," Grassley said. "That’s no way to run an institution, especially not the top law enforcement agency in the nation.
"I stood by President Trump’s decision to dismiss Comey in 2017 and I support his move all the more with each passing day," he added.
The newest declassified memos detail evidence alleging that in March 2017, Rybicki forwarded a communication to his private email address in furtherance of an unauthorized disclosure of classified information to journalists directed by Comey.
Federal prosecutors originally issued a preservation order for the private email account based on the findings by the FBI’s Washington Field Office that the communication was in furtherance of a media leak. Ultimately, though, the prosecutors decided against pursuing “additional legal process” because the communication was itself not classified.
Comey previously denied during congressional testimony that he had ever been a source in news articles related to the FBI’s investigations into Trump and Clinton and further denied that he had ever approved of anyone else at the FBI being such a source. He has long denied any wrongdoing and insisted he has been politically attacked because he stood up to Trump.
He has not responded to repeated requestsfor comment from Just the News.
An early-March 2017 tweet from Trump instigated the line of inquiry that turned up Rybicki’s use of a private email, the records show.
The memo cited that tweet from Trump in which he said: “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!”
The memo noted that, the next day, the Times published an article about how Comey reportedly asked the DOJ to reject Trump’s allegation publicly.
“The March 2017 NYT Article reported a USG official indicated Comey asked the DOJ to publicly reject the assertions in President Trump’s tweets, but the DOJ had not released any such statement. The tweets and article occurred shortly after the initiation of the USPIS Investigation,” the FBI memo said.
Though the Postal Inspection Service investigators asked several DOJ and FBI officials about “their discussion, actions and responses to the tweets and article,” the investigators could not determine with certainty the identity of the source in the Times article.
Unauthorized disclosure "At the implicit direction of Comey"
The FBI’s Washington field office “compiled findings from [that] Investigation regarding the tweets and the March 2017 NYT Article, and from additional investigation by [Washington Field Office]” in late October 2019.
A recently declassified portion of the memo said that “the findings revealed Rybicki forwarded an email containing a proposed statement to the news media regarding the tweets to his (Rybicki’s) presumed personal email account.”
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