On Thursday night, September 25, the news broke that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) under Attorney General Pam Bondi has indicted former FBI Director James Comey on criminal charges and is accusing him of lying to Congress under oath and obstructing a criminal proceeding. President Donald Trump has been pushing for DOJ to indict some of his political opponents — including Comey, New York State Attorney General Letitia James and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-California) — and he got his wish with the former FBI director.
The merits of the Comey indictment, however, are being hotly debated by DOJ alumni.
During a Friday morning, September 26 appearance on MSNBC, ex-federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade was highly critical of "the weakness of the case" and its "potential ethical lapses" — arguing that Trump makes "the defense's case easier" every time he rants about Comey on social media. Similarly, former FBI General Counsel Andrew Weissmann, on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," described the indictment as "an enormous assault on the rule of law" and criticized the "extraordinarily thin nature of the charges."
In an article published on September 25, Vox's Zack Beauchamp stresses that the indictment against is even "worse than I thought."
"For me, a journalist who covers declining democracies, this set off some pretty obvious alarm bells," Beauchamp warns. "President Donald Trump had already openly called on Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute Comey, one of his most prominent critics, but there, she was hampered by what looked like a total lack of evidence. Just this morning, ABC News reported that attorneys in Virginia’s Eastern District had investigated Comey for two months but found insufficient cause to support an indictment. That such an indictment was filed anyway feels a lot like a vindictive effort by an authoritarian president to wield law against his enemies."
Beauchamp attacks the Comey indictment as "an embarrassment to authoritarians," arguing that it is sloppy and badly reasoned.
"The first count alleges that Comey knowingly lied to the Senate in September 2020, when he said that he had not 'authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports' in regards to an investigation into an unnamed party described as Person 1 — who, given the context of the hearing, is mostly likely Trump. The indictment claims that he, in fact, did authorize someone to be an anonymous source to the media about this person, and thus lied to Congress. And that's it. There’s no explanation of what Comey was talking about during the hearing, why federal prosecutors believed him to be lying — nothing. Just a simple assertion that Comey lied."
The Vox reporter continues, "The second count of the indictment is even more vague. It alleges Comey 'did corruptly endeavor to influence, obstruct and impede the due and proper exercise of the power of inquiry under which an investigation was being had before the Senate Judiciary Committee by making false and misleading statements.'"
Read Zack Beauchamp's full article for Vox at this link.
