Former FBI Director, James Comey. Image: X
Former FBI Director, James Comey. Image: X
Trump’s obsession with revenge puts us all at risk. If he can indict James Comey and put a target on the back of Senator Adam Schiff because he ran one of the two impeachments of Trump, none of us is safe.
Republished with permission from Lucian K. Truscott IV
Former FBI Director James Comey was indicted yesterday by a grand jury in Richmond, Virginia on two lame-o made up counts—perjury and obstruction of justice by committing perjury. The U.S. Attorney who went before the grand jury and presented the government’s case was Lindsey Halligan, whose only qualification for being anywhere near a grand jury is that she graduated from law school and passed the bar. She is in her job because she went to one of the museums in Washington D.C. earlier this year and took note of a display of art that mentioned race. She made a big deal of this, so Trump hired her to work in the White House and put her in charge of stripping DEI or woke or something anyway from museums in Washington. Halligan was the only signature on the indictment. The previous U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, whom Trump appointed, had refused to take the Comey case to the grand jury and was fired by Trump. Assistant U.S. attorneys in the office also would not participate in the prosecution of the former FBI Director.
But this column is not about Halligan, it’s about Donald Trump. Comey and Trump go way back to one of the early days of Trump’s first administration when Trump noticed him across a room full of DOJ and FBI people he was meeting. At Trump’s behest, Comey walked across the room and shook hands with Trump. Comey is very, very tall, like basketball player level tall. He towered over Trump. Trump doesn’t like to be towered over, so he invited Comey to the White House for a private dinner, during which he apparently planned on intimidating the very tall FBI director so he could keep Comey in line.
Trump infamously asked Comey to pledge his loyalty to him—to Trump—multiple times at the dinner. Comey demurred each time, finally pledging that he would always be honest in carrying out his job. Not long after that, while testifying before the House Intelligence Committee, in answering a question from a congressman, Comey said that the FBI had had the Trump campaign and Trump himself under investigation for its contacts with Russians since July of 2016. Trump fired Comey, who still had six or seven years left on his 10 year term as FBI director, and then he threw a fit when he learned that Comey, on the day he was fired, had been in Los Angeles on FBI business and flew on the official FBI Gulfstream jet back to Washington to clear out his desk.
Comey gave congressional testimony damaging to Trump and continued to speak out about his abuses of power for nearly a decade. Trump has been bellowing about Comey ever since. I’m sure you have seen some of his recent bellowing—Comey is “One of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to,” “he has been bad for this country for so long,” Come is “a dirty cop,” and on and on.
Asked about the indictment of Comey at a press availability at the White House, Trump claimed not to know anything about it. Later, he crowed that Comey is “a destroyer of lives” and that he must “pay a very big price” for lying.
Everything that Trump has said about Comey, especially his statement that he is “guilty as hell,” will be used by Comey’s attorney when he files a motion to dismiss the indictment for selective and vindictive prosecution. Legal experts are saying there is ample evidence in Trump’s own statements to prove vindictive prosecution, so it is thought that Comey will prevail with that motion.
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Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist and screenwriter. He has covered stories such as Watergate, the Stonewall riots and wars in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels and several unsuccessful motion pictures. He has three children, lives in rural Pennsylvania and spends his time Worrying About the State of Our Nation and madly scribbling in a so-far fruitless attempt to Make Things Better.
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