Scolds Comey

Trump praises Bill Barr after IG report scolds Comey

But the president says the former FBI director "got Lucky!" for avoiding prosecution.

By POLITICO STAFF

President Donald Trump said the Department of Justice’s decision to not prosecute former FBI Director James Comey reflected well upon Attorney General Bill Barr, while also saying that Comey “got Lucky!”

“The fact that James Comey was not prosecuted for the absolutely horrible things he did just shows how fair and reasonable Attorney General Bill Barr is,” Trump tweeted. “So many people and experts that I have watched and read would have taken an entirely different course. Comey got Lucky!”

The DOJ’s Office of Inspector General said in a report released Thursday that the department had decided not to prosecute Comey for retaining memos about interactions with the Trump White House and for disclosing one such memo to the media.

But it also delivered a scathing rebuke of Comey. The report sharply criticized him for violating FBI and DOJ policies on handling information about sensitive law enforcement investigations. However, it cleared Comey of allegations that he leaked classified information.

Trump has long railed against Comey, accusing him of being a leaker and a weak FBI chief. Trump’s firing of Comey — which came with muddled reasoning from the president and the White House — led to the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller and cast a cloud over Trump’s presidency for months.

Earlier on Friday, Trump vented his frustration over the troubles that he associates with Comey.

“The disastrous IG Report on James Comey shows, in the strongest of terms, how unfairly I, and tens of millions of great people who support me, were treated. Our rights and liberties were illegally stripped away by this dishonest fool. We should be given our stolen time back?” Trump wrote.

Comey vigorously defended himself on Twitter moments after the report’s release on Thursday. He emphasized the fact that the report cleared him of allegations that he illegally disclosed classified information.

“I don’t need a public apology from those who defamed me, but a quick message with a ‘sorry we lied about you’ would be nice,” he wrote, adding, “And 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.”