Politics

Comey Used A Private Email Account For Official FBI Business

Amber Athey Podcast Columnist
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FBI Director James Comey reportedly used a private email account to conduct official FBI business, the new inspector general report will confirm.

Politico’s Kyle Cheney tweeted on Thursday that Inspector General Michael Horowitz found during a probe into the FBI’s Clinton email investigation that Comey was using a “personal Gmail account to conduct official FBI business.”

Embattled FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were also found to be using personal email accounts for work purposes, according to a review of the IG report. (RELATED: STRZOK: ‘We’ll Stop’ Trump Presidency)

The IG is deferring to the FBI on Strzok and Page’s private emails, but found Comey’s use of a personal email account “to be inconsistent with the DOJ Policy Statement.”

“We identified numerous instances in which Comey used a personal email account to conduct unclassified FBI business,” the report says. “We found that, given the absence of exigent circumstances and the frequency with which the use of personal email occurred, Comey’s use of a personal email account for unclassified FBI business to be inconsistent with Department policy.

Strzok emailed some “seal[ed]” information about the Anthony Weiner investigation using his personal account.

“We found that Strzok used his personal email accounts for official government business on several occasions, including forwarding an email from his FBI account to his personal email account about the proposed search warrant the Midyear team was seeking on the Weiner laptop,” the report says of Strzok. “This email included a draft of the search warrant affidavit, which contained information from the Weiner investigation that appears to have been under seal at the time in the Southern District of New York and information obtained pursuant to a grand jury subpoena issued in the Eastern District of Virginia in the Midyear investigation.”

The same FBI officials found to be using personal email accounts were responsible for probing Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email while serving as secretary of state.

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