President Trump on Monday launched an early morning tweetstorm, accusing former FBI director James Comey of leaking classified information to the media.
The tweet came just moments after a misleading segment aired on the Fox News morning show Fox and Friends that reported Comey had leaked classified information to the news media and put national security at risk.
Report accuses material James Comey leaked to a friend contained top secret information
Trump retweeted the Fox and Friends video before following with his comment. The Fox report referenced an article published Sunday in The Hill that cited “officials familiar with the documents" who stated some of Comey's memos about his interactions with President Trump included classified information.
"It turns out, he may actually have broken the rules," Fox News anchor Jillian Mele said. "A brand-new bombshell report accuses Comey of putting our national security at risk. According to The Hill, the former FBI director’s personal memos detailing private conversations with President Trump contained top-secret information."
But The Hill did not report Comey had leaked anything classified. The article stated Comey had written seven memos regarding nine conversations he had with the president. Of the seven memos, four were marked classified.
Trump fired Comey in May and almost immediately began threatening him against leaking information.
James Comey better hope that there are no "tapes" of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!
In one tweet, Trump threatened to release secret tapes of his conversations with Comey. More than a month later, the president admitted that he had not made any tapes.
Not long after being fired, Comey did leak a memo — one of several he kept about his conversations with the president.
Questions about the memos and Comey's interactions with Trump prompted the Senate Intelligence Committee to call Comey to testify on June 8.
The Feb. 14 memo was also unclassified, according to Daniel Richman, the Columbia Law School professor who provided it to the Times on behalf of Comey.
The FBI declined to release the memos to BuzzFeed News — including one that is unclassified — citing their potential to become part of law enforcement proceedings.
A document's potential impact on law enforcement proceedings is one of several reasons a federal agency may decline to release records. It may also deny the release of records because they are classified — which the FBI did not specifically do in this case.
The New York Times and CNN have filed lawsuits under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain the memos.
Some of the memos appear to have been classified retroactively, Politico reported on Monday.
Hours later, Fox News said the network would address its misleading report on Tuesday morning.
Then, Fox and Friends issued a correction on Twitter for referring to some of the memos as "top secret."
Correction: Comey's memos did not have top secret info. The report says half were classified at secret or confidential level, not top secret
They were not classified as top secret, the correction said, but rather secret or confidential.
On Tuesday morning, Fox and Friends made a similar statement on air, adding that it was not known whether the memo Comey leaked was actually classified.
"We were mistaken in that. According to a report, half the memos contained information classified at the secret or confidential level, not top secret. And the marking of the documents Mr. Comey leaked at this point are unclear. Just wanted to straighten that out," host Steve Doocy said.
The White House did not respond to questions about whether Trump would also rescind his statement.
