President Trump slammed James Comey early Monday after a report in The Hill that the former FBI director’s private memos on his conversations with Trump contained classified material.
“James Comey leaked CLASSIFIED INFORMATION to the media,” Trump tweeted.
“That is so illegal!”
The president also retweeted a Fox News report on The Hill’s article.
{mosads}Officials familiar with the memos told The Hill that more than half of the documents contained classified information, raising the possibility that Comey broke FBI rules and ignored a security protocol in the days leading up to the 2016 presidential election.
Comey testified last month that he considered the memos to be personal documents.
He also said during his Capitol Hill testimony that he shared at least one of the memos with a friend and asked that friend to leak information in one memo to the media in hopes of increasing pressure to get a special prosecutor named in the Justice Department’s investigation into Russian interference in the presidential election.
Comey added that he believed his personal memos were unclassified, but he hinted one or two of the documents might have contained classified information.
The Trump administration has been subject to frequent leaks, and the president and his aides have decried those who have released information to the media.
In May, Trump tweeted that it was his opinion that leaks coming out of the White House were “fabricated lies made up by the #FakeNews media.”
Rebecca Savransky contributed to this report, which was updated at 7:09 a.m.