Former FBI Director James Comey said Thursday that he launched an investigation into possible leaks from the FBI after former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani appeared to predict a bombshell that would rock Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign.

Less than two weeks before the 2016 election, Comey revealed the FBI was reopening the investigation into Clinton's email server after finding a new cache of emails on a laptop belonging to Anthony Weiner, the husband of Clinton aide Huma Abedin.

Days before the announcement, Giuliani said in an interview on Fox News that then-candidate Trump had some major surprises that would be revealed in the next few days. Giuliani later said he had been referring to the reopening of the investigation.

In an interview Thursday evening, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow pressed Comey on whether he knew if Giuliani, a Trump supporter, had any advance notice the announcement would be revealed.

“Not that I know of, but I saw that same publicity and so I commissioned an investigation to see if we could understand whether people were disclosing information out of the New York office or any other place that resulted in Rudy's report on Fox News and other leaks that we were seeing in the media. I don't know what the result of that was. I got fired before it was finished, but I know that I asked that it be investigated.”





Comey was fired by President Trump in May 2017.

Earlier Thursday, Giuliani was hired by the White House as part of President Trump’s legal team amid the Russia investigation into possible collusion between Trump's campaign and the Kremlin.

Comey’s book, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership, was released earlier this week.