James Comey: Justice Department will not charge former FBI director in spite of Trump attacks

Just before decision was announced, president tweeted Fox News clip saying Comey had been caught 'red handed'

The former FBI director had kept memos of his meetings with the president (EPA)

The Justice Department has declined to prosecute the former FBI director James Comey over how he dealt with his own memos containing “confidential” information, which was shared with the media after being fired from his post by Donald Trump.

The decision was announced on Thursday, shortly after the department’s inspector general referred Mr Comey for potential prosecution, and just hours after Mr Trump shared a Fox News clip suggesting that the intelligence official had been caught “red handed” with information he should not have had in his home.

“Director Comey was so self-righteous in telling the world that he didn’t leak, he didn’t do sneaky things, and he knew the law better than anybody else,” Jason Chaffetz, a former Republican congressman and frequent Fox News contributor, said during the clip shared by the president.

He continued: “But, when the FBI goes to your home and gets memos that reveal, evidently, we have to see if this is true, but confidential and classified information. You can’t just take that information and ... Have it personally.”

The memos – first revealed in May 2017 by the New York Times – were written by Mr Comey contemporaneously after interactions with the president that February when Mr Trump asked him to shelve an investigation into the former national security advisor Michael Flynn for lying about meetings he had with Russian officials.

“I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” Mr Trump told Mr Comey during that Oval Office meeting, according to the memo. “He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”

Mr Comey later testified that he had provided one of the memos to “a friend” to read to the newspaper, with the hopes that it would lead to the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. He also reportedly gave a copy to senior officials in the FBI, and the disclosure of the documents at that time led Mr Chaffetz, then a Republican congressman, to demand the FBI turn over “memoranda, notes, summaries and recordings” related to allegations that the president had attempted to impact the FBI investigation.

This would “raise questions as to whether the president attempted to influence or impede” the FBI, Mr Chaffetz wrote in 2017.

The Justice Department’s decision not to prosecute Mr Comey came just as the president prepared for a campaign rally in Cincinnati, Ohio, on Thursday evening, an event that is, officially, the third of his 2020 presidential campaign, even though he has been holding similar rallies throughout his presidency.

During his most recent rally in Greenville, North Carolina, Mr Trump’s crowd began chants of “send her back”, targetted at representative Ilhan Omar, a Somali-born Minnesota representative.

The Ohio rally comes just behind the second round of Democratic debates, and could provide another opportunity for the president’s supporters to chant the anti-Omar attack.