President Donald Trump walks alongside his attorney Todd Blanche at the New York State Supreme Court in New York, New York, NY, May 30, 2024. Mark Peterson/Pool via REUTERS
President Donald Trump and his Justice Department should be "ashamed" of their latest effort to exact revenge on a perceived enemy, with one conservative former lawyer writing for The New York Times that their legal filing is a "bad joke" that ought to get the team behind it "sanctioned."
David French is a former attorney and Times columnist who previously worked as a staff writer for the conservative National Review. He has been critical of Trump since he entered politics during the 2016 presidential race, and continues to write critically of his administration, particularly with regard to his abuse of the legal system to target his enemies.
In his latest column on Sunday morning, French wrote that the Trump DOJ is coming off of "a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad month," with the worst moment of its dire October coming early on, when it attempted for the third time to indict former FBI Director James Comey. French said this latest filing, accusing Comey of leaking information to the Times in 2016, is "more specious" than the prior attempts to go after him criminally, and broke down why in detail.
"To be clear, an information isn’t an indictment. It can’t actually start Comey’s case," French explained. "The Fifth Amendment says: 'No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury.' Instead, it’s a unilateral filing by prosecutors that has the effect of sometimes tolling (that is to say, stopping) the statute of limitations. It can only actually start a federal felony prosecution if the defendant waives his right to indictment by grand jury, which Comey has not done."
He added: "In fact, the Department of Justice admits that it filed the information for the purpose of tolling the statute of limitations. It was filed on the very day that the 10 year statute of limitations was set to expire. In effect, they’re hoping it can serve as a place holder that keeps the case alive until a grand jury finally indicts. But there’s a problem — a big problem. While some federal criminal statutes allow the department to toll the statute of limitations with an information, this one does not. As Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, wrote in National Review, the relevant statute requires an indictment within 10 years. It makes no reference to an information."
Summing up the situation, French pulled no punches.
"In other words, this legal filing is a bad joke," he argued. "The lawyers who brought it should be ashamed of themselves, and they should be sanctioned by the court."
French also noted that the first-term Trump DOJ previously looked into this situation with Comey twice, in 2017 and 2019, declining to bring charges each time. What is different now, he explained, is that Attorney General Todd Blanche is now in charge at the DOJ, and is willing to chase down any lead that might potentially help him fulfill Trump's whims.
