And There's No Question About Intent

During the election in 2016, the FBI director announced that he would recommend NOT prosecuting Hillary Clinton for her mishandling of classified information because Hillary lacked the "intent" to disseminate the classified information.  Of course, there is no requirement for intent in the relevant statute, but Comey's decision was followed.  Now, however, it seems that Comey himself may soon be prosecuted for mishandling classified documents, and doing so intentionally.  Iowa senator Chuck Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee released a letter today that he sent to the Deputy Attorney General.  In the letter, Grassley points out that after being fired, Comey gave a friend (Columbia Law School Professor Daniel Richman) four memoranda Comey had written for the purpose of leaking the information in the memos to the media.  At least one of the four memos contained classified information.  That means that Comey purposefully gave at least one classified document to a man without any security clearance so that the documents could be passed on to the media without a direct connection to Comey.  Comey intentionally gave classified documents to someone not authorized to have them.  That's a violation of the Espionage Act and a federal crime.

This is big stuff.  There's been speculation about this in the past, but Grassley's letter puts it all together in a very clear way.  The could be an indictment of Comey.