Murray Wood: Who's hot... and who's not
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WASHINGTON (AP) — James Comey was charged Thursday with lying to Congress in a criminal case filed days after President Donald Trump appeared to urge his attorney general to prosecute the former FBI director and other perceived political enemies.
The indictment makes Comey the first former senior government official involved in one of Trump’s chief grievances, the long-concluded investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, to face prosecution. Trump has for years derided that investigation as a “hoax” and a “witch hunt” despite multiple government reviews showing Moscow interfered on behalf of the Republican’s campaign, and has made clear his desire for retribution.
The criminal case is likely to deepen concerns that the Justice Department under Attorney General Pam Bondi is being weaponized in pursuit of investigations and now prosecutions of public figures the president regards as his political enemies. It was filed as the White House has taken steps to exert influence in unprecedented ways on the department, blurring the line between law and politics at an agency where independence in prosecutorial decision-making is a foundational principle.
Trump on Thursday hailed the indictment as “JUSTICE FOR AMERICA!” Bondi, a Trump loyalist, and FBI Director Kash Patel, a longtime vocal critic of the Russia investigation, issued similar statements. “No one is above the law,” Bondi said.
Comey, in a video he posted after his indictment, said: “My heart is broken for the Department of Justice but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system, and I’m innocent. So let’s have a trial.”
Comey was fired months into Trump’s first administration and since then has remained a top target for Trump supporters seeking retaliation related to the Russia investigation. He was singled out by name in a Saturday social media post in which Trump appeared to appeal directly to Bondi bring charges against Comey and complained that Justice Department investigations into his foes had not resulted in criminal cases.
“We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility,” Trump wrote, referencing the fact that he himself had been indicted and impeached multiple times. “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”
Turmoil in the office that filed the case
The office that filed the case against Comey, the Eastern District of Virginia, was thrown into turmoil last Friday following the resignation of chief prosecutor Erik Siebert, who had not charged Comey and had faced pressure to bring charges against another Trump target, New York Attorney General Letitia James, in a mortgage fraud investigation.
The following evening, Trump lamented in a Truth Social post aimed at the attorney general that department investigations had not resulted in prosecutions. He nominated as the new U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan, a White House aide who had been one of Trump’s personal lawyers but has not previously served as a federal prosecutor.
Halligan had rushed to present the case to a grand jury this week because prosecutors evaluating whether Comey lied to Congress during testimony on Sept. 30, 2020, had until Tuesday to bring a case before the five-year statute of limitations expired. The push to move forward came even as prosecutors in the office had detailed in a memo concerns about the pursuit of an indictment.
The sparse two-count indictment does not deal with the substance of the Russian investigation but instead consists of charges of making a false statement and obstructing a congressional proceeding.
It accuses Comey of lying to the Senate Judiciary Committee when he said he had not authorized anyone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports about a particular investigation. Though the indictment does not mention the investigation or its subject, it appears from the context to refer to an FBI inquiry related to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who ran for president against Trump in 2016.
It also alleges that he did “corruptly endeavor to influence, obstruct and impede the due and proper exercise” of the Senate’s inquiry.
Lingering anger over the Russia investigation
Trump has for years railed against both a finding by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia preferred him to Clinton, a Democrat, in the 2016 election as well as criminal investigation that tried to determine whether his campaign had conspired with Moscow to sway the outcome of that race.
Prosecutors led by special counsel Robert Mueller did not establish that Trump or his associates criminally colluded with Russia, but they did find that Trump’s campaign had welcomed Moscow’s assistance.
The indictment comes against the backdrop of a Trump administration effort to recast the Russia investigation as the outgrowth of an effort under Democratic President Barack Obama to overhype Moscow’s interference in the election and to undermine the legitimacy of Trump’s victory.
Administration officials, including CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, have declassified a series of documents meant to chip away at the strength of an Obama-era intelligence assessment that said Moscow had engaged in a broad campaign of interference at the direction of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
A senior Justice Department official in Republican President George W. Bush’s administration, Comey was picked by Obama to lead the FBI in 2013 and was director when the bureau opened the Russia investigation in the summer of 2016.
Comey’s relationship with Trump was strained from the start and was exacerbated when Comey resisted a request by Trump at a private White House dinner to pledge personal loyalty to the president. That overture so unnerved the FBI director that he documented it in a contemporaneous memorandum.
Trump fired Comey in May 2017, an action later investigated by Mueller for potential obstruction of justice.
After being let go, Comey authorized a close friend to share with a reporter the substance of an unclassified memo that documented an Oval Office request from Trump to shut down an FBI investigation into his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn. Trump and his allies later branded Comey a leaker, with the president even accusing him of treason. Comey himself has called Trump “ego driven” and likened him to a mafia don.
The government’s handling of the Trump-Russia investigation is among the most studied chapters of modern American history, with multiple reviews and reports dedicated to it, and yet prosecutors have not pursued cases against senior FBI officials.
Prosecutors in the first Trump Justice Department declined to prosecute Comey following an inspector general review into his handling of memos documenting his conversations with Trump in the weeks before he was fired. He also was not charged by a special counsel, John Durham, who scrutinized the FBI’s handling of the Trump-Russia investigation.
Earlier this year, the department fired Comey’s daughter, Maurene Comey, from her job as a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York. She has since sued, saying the termination was carried out without any explanation and was done for political reasons.
Separately, Comey’s son-in-law, Troy Edwards, resigned as a federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia minutes after Comey was indicted. Troy Edwards wrote in a one-sentence resignation letter addressed to Halligan that he quit his job “to uphold my oath to the Constitution and the country.”
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Kunzelman reported from Alexandria, Virginia.
Eric Tucker, Alanna Durkin Richer And Michael Kunzelman, The Associated Press
