'Include this': Ex-US attorneys explain how Trump indicting NY AG hurts his Comey case

President Donald Trump's Department of Justice (DOJ) indicted another one of his longtime political enemies on Thursday, charging New York Attorney General Letitia James of mortgage fraud and making false statements. But one veteran prosecutor says this could end up undermining the case against another one of Trump's opponents: Former FBI Director James Comey.

During a Thursday segment on MSNBC, Barbara McQuade — who was U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan during former President Barack Obama's administration — joined host Chris Hayes' show along with former U.S. attorney Harry Litman (who worked out of the Western District of Pennsylvania during Bill Clinton's second term). Litman began the segment by saying that the Comey and James indictments were a direct violation of the DOJ's manual for prosecutors, which he said explicitly discourages using prosecutorial powers for political reasons.

"This is Comey 2.0, and now that we have two of them, it feels almost like the mission of the DOJ as opposed to a one-off," Litman said.

McQuade further elaborated on that point, said Comey may have just gotten some helpful ammunition for his pending motion to dismiss his own criminal charges. She said Comey's defense counsel (former U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who worked in the Northern District of Illinois under Presidents Obama and George W. Bush) is likely going to justify throwing out his client's case due by arguing that his client and James were subjected to "selective prosecution" or "vindictive prosecution." She also noted that the Wall Street Journal reported that a screed Trump posted to his Truth Social instructing Attorney General Pam Bondi to indict Comey and James was actually meant to be a private message.

"If I were Pat Fitzgerald filing this motion for selective prosecution, I think I would include this case. And who knows? by the time they file their motion there might be more," McQuade said. "But it does sort of build this case."

"Usually you can't bring in extraneous matters from other cases in this case," she continued. "But this is going before a judge, this is not subject to the rules of evidence. This is about showing that the motivation in this case was to treat Letitia James differently because of politics."

"So the selective prosecution doctrine, which as Harry [Litman] said is a violation of the due process clause, says that 'I am charging this person not because of any legitimate law enforcement objective but because of some arbitrary factor like race, or religion, or politics.' So if you can show that there's not just the James case, but also the Comey case — and who knows, maybe it'll also soon be the [Adam] Schiff case — I thin that can add to the evidence that the judge can consider in deciding if this was politically motivated."

Watch the segment below:

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