Politics

James Comey Discussed ‘Sensitive’ Information on His Personal Email

Former head of FBI improperly used Gmail account hundreds of times

November 10, 2018

Former FBI Director James Comey, who held a press conference only months before the 2016 presidential election to scold, although not indict, then-candidate Hillary Clinton about her use of a personal email account while secretary of state, turns out to be an insufferable hypocrite.

According to The New York Post, the Department of Justice has 1,200 pages of messages where Comey discussed work-related information with his chief of staff via Gmail. The paper obtained 156 of the emails through a Freedom of Information Act request, but seven of the exchanges were deemed too sensitive for release. They included information that would, “disclose techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions,” according to the DOJ.

The Post received the messages from a conservative watchdog group The Cause of Action Institute, which obtained them through a Freedom of Information request.

“It’s just so transparently hypocritical to have one standard for a person you are investigating and an entirely different standard for yourself when you are the one who’s enforcing the law,” Lisa Rosenberg, executive director of nonpartisan group Open the Government, told the Post.

Comey admitted his use of a personal email account was “inconsistent” with governmental policy and said it was “incidental” and limited to exchanging “public speech or public email.” In the email exchanges obtained by the Post, Comey discussed media articles about his investigation into Clinton and shared that a Clinton supporter had confronted him in public.

“Lady just passed me in a local restaurant and said ‘Go Hillary,’” the then-FBI director wrote mere days ahead of the election on November 6th 2016. “I acted like a blind deer in the headlights and ignored her. When will this end?”

Comey has maintained that his use of private email for government business was “a totally different thing” than Clinton’s, but Rosenberg disagrees.

“He can’t have it both ways,” Rosenberg said. “Either he used his personal email for things that were public or would be in the public domain, or he used it to discuss internal policies, investigations, etc. that might or might not be appropriately withheld under FOIA.”

Or, as Clinton put it when news of Comey’s use of a personal email account for government business was first reported in June, “But my emails.”