Bret Baier on key takeaways from his James Comey interview
'Special Report' host Bret Baier sat down with the former FBI director; Baier reacts to Comey's responses on 'The Story.'
Former FBI Director James Comey told Fox News on Thursday night that the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General has interviewed him about his handling of memos detailing conversations between Comey and President Trump.
Fox News reported last week that the DOJ watchdog was looking into whether Comey gave classified information to unauthorized sources as part of a broader review of the former director's outside communications, including with the media.
Comey told "Special Report" host Bret Baier that he expected Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz to issue a report about the memos "not on the handling of classified information, because that's frivolous, but on: Did I comply with policy? Did I comply with my employment agreement?"
JUSTICE DEPARTMENT IG PROBING COMEY MEMOS OVER CLASSIFIED MATERIAL
Comey, whom Trump fired in May 2017, emphatically denied Thursday that sharing the memos with his legal team constituted a leak of classified information. Instead he compared the process to keeping a "diary."
"I didn't consider it part of an FBI file," Comey told Baier when discussing one of the memos. "It was my personal aide-memoire ... I always thought of it as mine."
Comey also claimed that the FBI approved the use of one of the memos in his new book, "A Higher Loyalty."
Testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee last year, Comey said he made the decision to document his interactions with Trump in a way that would not trigger security classification. He also testified that he avoided putting classified material in the memos so that they could be more widely shared.
However, after a January 2017 meeting that included then-President-elect Trump at Trump Tower, Comey wrote that the material should have been classified at the SECRET level unless the intelligence agencies thought otherwise.
COMEY DENIES RELEASE OF MEMO CONTENTS WAS A 'LEAK' IN FOX NEWS INTERVIEW
"I am not sure of the proper classification here,” Comey wrote, "so have chosen SECRET. Please let me know if it should be higher or lower than that."
Comey's disclosure of his memos prompted Trump to describe him as a "liar and a leaker" earlier Thursday.
"He leaked classified information to get a special counsel and leaked the memos which are classified – the memos were about me and he didn’t write those memos accurately. He wrote a lot of phony stuff," Trump told "Fox & Friends."
Comey responded by saying Trump was "just wrong" and his statement was "false."
Fox News' Bret Baier, Alex Pappas, Catherine Herridge and Judson Berger contributed to this report.
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