FILE PHOTO: Former FBI Director, James Comey appears before the Senate Intelligence Committee in the Hart Office Building on Thursday June 08, 2017 in Washington, DC.
Matt McClain | The Washington Post | Getty Images
Former FBI Director James Comey was indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury in Virginia on charges of making a false statement and obstruction for past testimony to Congress, just days after President Donald Trump pressed Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute Comey.
Comey is accused of lying during testimony at the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 30, 2020, when he denied authorizing someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports regarding an investigation of Hillary Clinton and her emails when she was the Democratic presidential nominee in 2016.
“The charges as alleged in this case represent a breach of the public trust at an extraordinary level,” said interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan of the Eastern District of Virginia, whose office will prosecute Comey on the two criminal counts.
Halligan was installed in her office by Trump earlier this week, after he predecessor balked at seeking an indictment of Comey.
Halligan sought the indictment despite receiving a memo from prosecutors in her office stating their reasons for not believing that there was probable cause to ask a grand jury to charge Comey, MSNBC reported.
Comey said, “I am not afraid,” in an Instagram video response to the indictment issued in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, where he was ordered to appear Oct. 9.
“My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump,” Comey said in the video. “But we couldn’t imagine ourselves living any other way. We will not live on our knees and you shouldn’t either.”
“Somebody that I love dearly recently said that fear is the tool of a tyrant and she’s right,” Comey said.
“But I’m not afraid, and I hope you’re not either. I hope instead you are engaged, you are paying attention and you will vote, like your beloved country depends upon it, which it does,” he 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 and keep the faith.”
Comey’s attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald, told CNBC: “Jim Comey denies the charges filed today in their entirety. We look forward to vindicating him in the courtroom.”
Fitzgerald is a long-time friend of Comey and, like him, is also a former top federal prosecutor.
A court filing indicated that federal prosecutors asked the grand jury to indict Comey on two counts of making false statements and one count of obstruction.
The filing said that the grand jury did not indict Comey on one of the false statement counts because more than 12 grand jurors “did not concur” in indicting on count one.
That uncharged count involved Comey’s answer to a question from Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South during the September 2020, hearing.
Graham that day asked if Comey remembered “being taught of PERSON I’s “approval of a plan concerning” PERSON 2 and the 2016 U.S. Presidential election,” the filing reveals. Comey denied such knowledge.
Person 1 refers to Clinton, the former secretary of state. Person 2 is Trump, who was the Republican nominee that year.
The plan concerning Trump allegedly referred to Clinton’s purported effort to tie Trump to Russia to distract from the controversy involving her emails.
“I don’t believe it’s possible that Comey did not know there was accusations against Clinton cooking this up,” Graham told Fox News in an interview Thursday night..
The five-year statute of limitations on the false statement charge that was approved by the grand jury, which relates to Comey’s testimony about not authorizing a leak about the Clinton probe, was set to expire next week.
If convicted, Comey faces a maximum possible sentence of five years in prison.
Federal criminal sentences are often less than the maximum because of federal guidelines.
NBC News reported that Comey’s son-in-law, Assistant U.S. Attorney Troy Edward, resigned from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia minutes after Comey was indicted. Edwards submitted a letter that said he quit “to uphold my oath to the Constitution and the country,” NBC reported.
The charges came five days after Trump publicly complained to Attorney General Pam Bondi that “nothing is being done” about Comey and other of the president’s perceived enemies. Trump claimed those people were “all guilty as hell.”
Trump gloated about Comey’s indictment in a post on Truth Social.
“JUSTICE IN AMERICA! One of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to is James Comey, the former Corrupt Head of the FBI,” Trump wrote.
“He has been so bad for our Country, for so long, and is now at the beginning of being held responsible for his crimes against our Nation. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,” Trump wrote.
Bondi referenced Comey’s indictment, without mentioning him by name, as news of the charges broke.
“No one is above the law,” Bondi wrote in a post on X.
“Today’s indictment reflects this Department of Justice’s commitment to holding those who abuse positions of power accountable for misleading the American people,” Bondi said. “We will follow the facts in this case.”
FBI Director Kash Patel, in his own post on X, wrote, “Today, your FBI took another step in its promise of full accountability.”
Halligan, 36, has no prior prosecutorial experience, but previously represented Trump in legal cases.
She replaced Erik Siebert as interim U.S. attorney for Virginia’s Eastern District.
Siebert had been tasked with investigating Comey and another Trump foe, New York Attorney General Letitia James, who brought a civil business fraud case against the president.
But Seibert’s probe of mortgage fraud claims against James turned up insufficient evidence to charge her, NBC News reported.
Siebert also raised concerns about a criminal case against Comey.
“I want him out,” Trump recently said of Siebert.
Trump has long expressed contempt for Comey, whom he fired during his first term in the White House in May 2017.
Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, condemned the indictment of Comey.
“Donald Trump has made clear that he intends to turn our justice system into a weapon for punishing and silencing his critics,” Warner said in a statement, which noted the circumstances of Siebert’s departure.
“This kind of interference is a dangerous abuse of power,” Warner said. “Our system depends on prosecutors making decisions based on evidence and the law, not on the personal grudges of a politician determined to settle scores.”
“By ousting a respected, independent prosecutor and replacing him with a partisan loyalist, Trump is undermining one of the most important U.S. Attorney’s offices in the country and eroding the rule of law itself.”