Fox News tells TVNewser the network will address its report this morning about former FBI director James Comey which Pres. Trump cited in a tweet.
At 6:12 a.m. this morning on Fox & Friends, news anchor Jillian Mele said “a brand new bombshell report” suggested Comey “may have actually broken the rules” and put “our national security at risk” when he shared with a friend a memo he’d written detailing one of his conversations with Pres. Trump.
The problem is that Fox & Friends’ interpretation of the story, published Sunday night by The Hill, is incorrect.
The story, which cites “officials familiar with the documents,” mentions that more than half of the 7 memos Comey wrote to “memorialize” his conversations with the president were determined “to contain classified information.”
The Hill story does not say, as Fox & Friends reported, that the specific memo Comey shared with Columbia Law professor Daniel Richman with the intent of having it passed along to news outlets contained “top secret information.”
Still, at 6:40 a.m., the president tweeted this:
James Comey leaked CLASSIFIED INFORMATION to the media. That is so illegal!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 10, 2017
Senior White House adviser Kellyanne Conway also made note of the report during appearances on other morning shows.
The former FBI Director testified last month that the particular memo eventually on by the New York Times was unclassified.
“Jim Comey never gave me a memo that was classified; and the memo whose substance I passed on the Times has never, to my knowledge, been classified,” Richman stated.
A Fox News spokesperson tells TVNewser the show will address the reporting tomorrow morning.