"An inquiry into years-old disclosures of classified information is highly unusual and leaves law enforcement officials open to accusations of politicizing their work."
Emphasis mine. I'm not sure why the Times bothered to report it -- editorialize on it, actually. Here's one theory. The The Conservative Treehouse blog, written anonymously by someone who calls himself Sundance and who some thing is a Mark Bradman of Florida, speculates that the Justice Department leaked this to the Times to deflect criticism for doing nothing on the coup against Trump." .. is this simply chaff and countermeasures intended to keep the heat off corruption monitors Bill Barr and John Durham? People are rightly skeptical of this latest report as all prior reports of Comey misconduct have been summarily dismissed by current DOJ corruption monitors.
"Is this latest leak about yet another Comey investigation simply an effort by the DOJ to deflect and isolate themselves from anger and frustration while President Trump is going through an impeachment trial? Given the history, the possibility cannot easily be dismissed."
If that's the case, why would the New York Times do something to help Bill Barr?~ Excursus