Ex-FBI Director Comey indicted on charges of lying to Congress, obstruction

James Comey was fired months into Trump's first administration and since then has remained a top target for Trump supporters seeking retaliation related to the Russia investigation

James Comey has been charged 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.

Thursday's indictment makes Comey the first former senior government official involved in one of Trump's chief grievances, the long-concluded investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, to face prosecution. Trump has for years derided that investigation as a "hoax" and a "witch hunt" despite multiple government reviews showing Moscow interfered on behalf of the Republican's campaign, and has made clear his desire for retribution.

 

Minutes after the former FBI director was indicted, his son-in-law Troy Edwards resigned as a federal prosecutor.

Edwards quit his job "to uphold my oath to the Constitution and the country", he wrote in a one-sentence resignation letter addressed to Lindsey Halligan, the newly appointed acting US Attorney in Virginia's Eastern District, the office that charged Comey and employed Edwards.

Edwards was the deputy chief of the National Security Section, a prestigious role in a US attorney's office that covers the Pentagon and CIA headquarters, handling some of the highest-profile espionage cases.

The criminal case against Comey is likely to deepen concerns that the Justice Department under Bondi is being weaponised in pursuit of investigations and now prosecutions of public figures the president regards as his political enemies. It was filed as the White House has taken steps to exert influence in unprecedented ways on the department, blurring the line between law and politics at an agency where independence in prosecutorial decision-making is a foundational principle.

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.

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."  Comey was fired months into Trump's first administration and since then has remained a top target for Trump supporters seeking retaliation related to the Russia investigation. 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!!!"  The office that filed the case against Comey, the Eastern District of Virginia, was thrown into turmoil last Friday following the resignation of chief prosecutor Erik Siebert, who had not charged Comey and had faced pressure to bring charges against another Trump target, New York Attorney General Letitia James, in a mortgage fraud investigation.

The following evening, 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 September 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.

The two-count indictment consists of charges of making a false statement and obstructing a congressional proceeding.

It accuses Comey of lying to the Senate when he said he had not authorised 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 inquiry into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who ran for president against Trump in 2016.

It also alleges that Comey obstructed Congress when he said he did not recall being presented with information that purported to show a Clinton campaign plan to tie Trump to Russia. But that theory, which has been based on some Republican allies of Trump, is based on emails that investigators examined but did not determine to be authentic or credible.

Trump has for years railed against both a finding by US intelligence agencies that Russia preferred him to Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election and the criminal investigation that tried to determine whether his campaign had conspired with Moscow to sway the outcome of that race.

Prosecutors led by special counsel Robert Mueller did not establish that Trump or his associates criminally colluded with Russia, but they did find that Trump's campaign had welcomed Moscow's assistance.

Trump has seized on the fact that Mueller's investigation did not find a criminal conspiracy, as well as significant errors and omissions made by the FBI in wiretap applications, to claim vindication. A yearslong investigation into potential misconduct during the Russia investigation was conducted by a different special counsel, John Durham. That produced three criminal cases, including against an FBI lawyer, but not against senior government officials.

The indictment comes against the backdrop of a Trump administration effort to cast the Russia investigation as the outgrowth of an effort under Democratic President Barack Obama to overhype Moscow's interference in the election and to undermine the legitimacy of Trump's victory.

Administration officials, including CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, have declassified a series of documents meant to chip away at the strength of an Obama-era intelligence assessment published in January 2017 that said Moscow had engaged in a broad campaign of interference at the direction of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Comey's relationship with Trump was strained from the start and was exacerbated when Comey resisted a request by Trump at a private White House dinner to pledge personal loyalty to the president. That overture so unnerved the FBI director that he documented it in a contemporaneous memorandum.

Trump fired Comey in May 2017, an action later investigated by Mueller for potential obstruction of justice.

After being let go, Comey authorised a close friend to share with a reporter the substance of an unclassified memo that documented an Oval Office request from Trump to shut down an FBI investigation into his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn. Trump and his allies later branded Comey a leaker, with the president even accusing him of treason. Comey himself has called Trump "ego driven" and likened him to a mafia don.