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“The US Department of Justice has charged James Comey with perjury over testimony he gave to Congress five years ago… The two-page indictment is short on detail, but it says Mr Comey has been charged with one count of making false statements and another of obstruction of justice. He maintains he is innocent and will prove that in court.” BBC
“The effort to target Comey had been viewed with skepticism in the Eastern District of Virginia, the U.S. attorney's office handling the case. After the district's top federal prosecutor, Erik Siebert, resigned last week, others in the office told his successor, Lindsey Halligan, that charges should not be filed due to a lack of evidence, according to a source…
“Halligan most recently served as a White House adviser, and before that was one of Trump's personal defense lawyers. In a highly unusual move, Halligan personally presented the evidence to the grand jury on Thursday - a task typically performed by a line prosecutor and not the U.S. Attorney.” Reuters
Here’s our Weekly Spotlight explaining the charges against Comey. The Flip Side
The left argues that the prosecution of Comey is politically motivated.
“It was clear that Trump would not tolerate a U.S. attorney who refused to go along with his retribution agenda, calling Siebert ‘a Woke RINO, who was never going to do his job.’ In Trump’s mind, [the] public officials were ‘guilty as hell’ — no trial required. Of what crime, he didn’t say. But revenge was the common thread. ‘They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING,’ he wrote. ‘JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!’”
Barbara McQuade, MSNBC
“Halligan wound up personally presenting the case to the grand jury because nobody else in the office would, which is very weird and unusual. There’s no question that Trump orchestrated this entire prosecution because he is still angry at Comey over the Russia investigation and perhaps other criticisms Comey has made of him. The president overruled the judgment of qualified prosecutors to persecute somebody he personally dislikes.”
Mark Joseph Stern, Slate
“The president openly (indeed on Truth Social) directed his attorney general to go after them promptly, then bragged about firing Erik Siebert, the U.S. attorney who declined to pursue indictments, then placed his lawyer Lindsey Halligan in the position to get the thing done and set a stopwatch for her to do it. Of course, she then alone signed a bare-bones Comey indictment that contains nearly no details of the alleged crimes…
“And then… the president glided into the Oval Office to say that none of it had had anything to do with him… He doesn’t care that Comey will probably manage to get the lawsuit dismissed, or that the U.S. attorney will fail to convict. This is about chilling and terrorizing opponents as an end in itself.”
Dahlia Lithwick, Slate
“We know the response that Trump allies will offer, and it is wholly unpersuasive. They claim that the actions of Mr. Trump and his attorney general, Pam Bondi, are no worse than the Biden Justice Department’s decision to indict Mr. Trump. Those charges related to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot and the attempt to overturn the 2020 election, along with the removal of sensitive documents from the White House…
“But that notion buys into a false equivalence. In the earlier cases, there is no doubt that laws were broken, and there is significant evidence that Mr. Trump was a part of it. No such evidence exists as yet about his current targets. His fundamental position is that the law itself has no meaning — that he should be able both to break it when he chooses and to use it as a partisan weapon… Our country has entered a grave new period of injustice.”
Editorial Board, New York Times
The right is critical of Comey’s prosecutorial record.
The right is critical of Comey’s prosecutorial record.
“High Obama officials abused our intelligence agencies and Justice Department, including the FBI, to advance the Russiagate hoax… The entirely bogus scandals kneecapped Trump for years, ruining the lives of Flynn and other top aides… Most Democrats still don’t realize the Steele dossier was a complete fiction, nor that the FBI and Justice lawyers lied to the courts to obtain wiretaps of Trump associates…
“And once Trump was out of office, Democrats waged a multi-jurisdictional effort to destroy him… President Joe Biden let it be known to The New York Times that he was furious at Attorney General Merrick Garland’s failure to charge Trump with crimes — a message every bit as public as any Truth Social post. This soon had the feds invading his home to hunt for stray documents…
“They combed through his business records to invent a criminal campaign violation because of how certain payments were booked — even though these were private files that had no bearing on anything outside of Trump’s company. They colluded with New York’s attorney general to contrive mortgage fraud that had no basis in any complaint by or harm to any party… Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.”
Editorial Board, New York Post
“Comey is hardly the pristine model of ethical leadership’ that he described in his book. Putting aside his critical role in the Russia collusion investigation, Comey tossed aside even the pretense of ethics after Trump fired him. Inspector General Michael Horowitz issued a scathing report that found Comey was a leaker and had violated FBI policy in his handling of FBI memos…
“On his way out of the bureau, Horowitz wrote, Comey improperly removed FBI materials, including those containing the ‘code name and true identity’ of a sensitive source. While he did not find that he disclosed the classified information, Horowitz found that Comey took ‘the unauthorized disclosure of sensitive investigative information, obtained during the course of FBI employment, in order to achieve a personally desired outcome.’… This is an ignoble moment that [Comey] helped bring about.”
Jonathan Turley, New York Post
Some argue, “The Comey indictment is not an unprecedented ‘break-glass moment.’ That doesn’t mean it is not profoundly dangerous. It is. It’s a continuation of a cycle begun before the 2024 election in which those in power prosecute their political enemies. Once such a cycle starts, it’s very hard to stop, and it is almost outrageous to expect Trump to forbear given what he went through. But that cycle is a formula for a constitutional death spiral, and unless the charges against Comey are airtight, they should not go forward.”
Jed Rubenfeld, Free Press
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