WASHINGTON--The U.S. Justice Department has decided not to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey despite an internal investigation that found he improperly leaked information to the news media, the department's internal watchdog said on Thursday.
The Justice Department's Office of Inspector General said Comey asked a friend to share the contents of a memo with the New York Times to pressure the department to launch an independent investigation into his conversations with President Donald Trump.
In the memo, Comey described a meeting in which Trump allegedly asked him to drop the FBI's investigation into Michael Flynn, who at the time was his national security adviser. Flynn has since pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations with Russian officials.
Comey signed off on an investigation into the Trump campaign's possible ties to Russia during the 2016 election and later emerged as a prominent critic of the president after Trump fired him in May 2017. Trump and many of his allies say that investigation should never have begun.
The Justice Department appointed a special counsel, Robert Mueller, to handle the investigation after Comey left. That probe unearthed numerous contacts between the campaign and Russian officials but concluded that there was not enough evidence to establish a criminal conspiracy.
Mueller's final report did not reach a conclusion as to whether Trump's efforts to interfere with the probe amounted to criminal obstruction of justice, but it also did not exonerate the president. Attorney General William Barr concluded that he did not see enough evidence to bring obstruction charges.
The Inspector General said on Thursday that while Comey's memo did not contain classified material, he set a dangerous example when he shared sensitive information to create public pressure for official action. "Were current or former FBI employees to follow the former Director's example and disclose sensitive information in service of their own strongly held personal convictions, the FBI would be unable to dispatch its law enforcement duties properly," the report said.
Comey said on Twitter that people who have accused him of sharing classified information should apologize. "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 said.
