Trump's new tart, Lindsey Halligan, replacing Erik Siebert (who said it was bullshit and refused to do it) got an indictment against James Comey. I didn't think they'd get it past a grand jury.
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.
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The criminal case is likely to deepen concerns that the Justice Department under Bondi is being weaponized in pursuit of investigations and now prosecutions of public figures the president regards as his political enemies.
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Trump on Thursday hailed the indictment as “JUSTICE FOR AMERICA!” Attorney General Pam 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.
Chicago Tribune
That's an obvious lie.
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.”
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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 charges.
“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!!!”
That's probably going to be helpful to Comey's defense.
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 lacks experience 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.
She was hired to do it, so she did it.
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 leak information. Though the indictment does not mention the investigation or its subject, it appears from the context to refer to a leak related to an FBI inquiry into 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.
And they're off to a great start...
Interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan got a grand jury to indict former FBI Director James Comey on two counts. But Halligan showed her inexperience Thursday as the jurors rejected a third charge, and she submitted the wrong documents to the judge.
It was Halligan’s fourth day on the job. She was formerly Trump’s personal lawyer, and recently led the president’s efforts to de-emphasize slavery at the Smithsonian museums.
New Republic
So not really a lawyer. Just one of his bevy of blonds with law licenses.
Having never prosecuted a case before, Halligan scored the position after her predecessor failed to go after Trump’s enemies with sufficient zeal for the president’s liking, seemingly because of, well, sheer lack of evidence against them. Relatedly, in a memo this week, prosecutors advised Halligan not to pursue charges against Comey, citing insufficient evidence.
But she knew why she was put in the position. She had no choice.
The newcomer went it alone Thursday, as MSNBC’s Ken Dilanian reports that Halligan “presented the Comey indictment all by herself to the grand jury,” a sign that she “may have a problem finding a prosecutor in office to work on the case.”
I like to think that's the reason and not that she's so enamored of herself and her new position that she thinks she earned it by being brilliant.
The indictment was also signed only by Halligan, according to The New York Times, while “typically such filings are also endorsed by career prosecutors who have gathered the evidence in the case.”
The grand jury on Thursday voted to indict Comey on two of three counts sought by Halligan—false statements and obstructing a congressional proceeding.
Halligan failed to convince 12 jurors to vote for another false statements charge, related to Comey’s answers to Senator Lindsey Graham during a September 2020 hearing. (Comey had replied, “That doesn’t ring any bells with me,” when asked by Graham if officials informed the FBI that Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign “was going to create a scandal regarding Trump and Russia” to distract from her email scandal.)
And she tried to pass that off as a false statement? Not smart.
After the jury rejected that charge, prosecutors presented U.S. Magistrate Judge Lindsey Vaala with an indictment with just the two others. But, as The Washington Post reports, Halligan accidentally “gave the judge both indictments Thursday evening, prompting confusion.”
“This has never happened before. I’ve been handed two documents ... with a discrepancy,” Vaala said. “I’m a little confused why I was handed two things ... that were inconsistent.”
Halligan, per NBC, insisted she “did not see” the first document with the tossed indictment. Vaala observed, “It has your signature on it.”
Ooops.
Bondi’s own staff think this is a weak move designed to make Trump feel better in spite of the fact that the charges will be hard to prove.
“What I am hearing from DoJ sources: The Comey indictment is among the worst abuses in DOJ history,” MSNBC’s Ken Dilanian wrote Thursday on X. “Shocking. It’s hard to overstate how a big a moment this is.”
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“It doesn’t surprise them, though, because this is the way the Justice Department has been. Career officials have largely been either pushed out or silenced and are not in meetings about major decisions about cases.”
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“I think this is a tragic day for America,” former [Trump] White House lawyer Ty Cobb told CNN. “What we have here is a clear vindictive prosecution, a clear selective prosecution. We have a president for the first time in history ordering his Attorney General to indict his enemies,” Cobb said. “And the Attorney General, instead of being the independent force that she’s supposed to be saying: ‘Yes, sir. How fast can I get that done for you?”
UPDATE 09/28/2025:
I don't know what this means. Stay tuned.
