Sarah Sanders: Justice Department ‘should certainly look at’ prosecuting Comey

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Tuesday that the Justice Department “should certainly look at” prosecuting former FBI Director James Comey after the White House accused him of leaking information and providing false testimony under oath.

“That’s not the president’s role,” Sanders told reporters at the afternoon briefing, where she was asked if President Donald Trump would encourage the department to prosecute Comey. “That’s the job of the Department of Justice, and something they should certainly look at.”


“Is that something you’d like to see?” the reporter followed up.

“I’m not sure about that specifically, but I think if there's ever a moment where we feel someone's broken the law, particularly if they're the head of the FBI, I think that's something that certainly should be looked at,” Sanders replied.

Trump fired Comey in May and later said he had done so because of the ongoing investigation into his campaign’s relationship with Russia, which Comey was overseeing in his capacity as head of the FBI.

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In later testimony on Capitol Hill, Comey detailed his relationship with the president, including interactions in which he said Trump asked him to drop an ongoing investigation into his short-lived first national security adviser, Michael Flynn. Trump denied pressuring Comey to drop that probe.

Comey has not retracted his claim. He said he took extemporaneous notes, in the form of memos, on his conversations with Trump.

The White House has also alleged that it was illegal for Comey to ask a friend to share information from those memos with a reporter, as he acknowledged doing in the congressional testimony. Trump tweeted in July that Comey had leaked classified information, though Daniel Richman, the friend who received the material and later shared it with a reporter, said it was not classified.

