Ex-FBI Director James Comey charged with making false statement and obstruction

The indictment made of Comey the first former senior government leader to face prosecution in connection with one of the main grievances of Trump: the Investigation of Russian Interference In the 2016 elections. Trump and his supporters have long mocked this investigation as a “hoax” and a “witch hunt” despite multiple criticisms of the government showing that Moscow interfered on behalf of the Republican campaign.

The criminal case is likely to deepen the concerns that the Ministry of Justice under the Attorney General Pam Bondi, a loyalist of Trump, is armed in the pursuit of surveys and now public prosecution that the president considers his political enemies.

He was filed while the White House has taken measures to exercise an unprecedented influence on the operations of the Ministry of Justice, blurring the border between law and policy for an agency where independence in the decision -making is a fundamental principle.

Comey was licensee Months after Trump’s first administration and have long been a target for Trump supporters looking for reprisals. Comey was distinguished by his name in a Saturday social media position in which Trump complained directly to Bondi that she had not yet carried any charges against him.

The next evening, Trump said in a social post intended for the Attorney General that the department’s investigations had not led to prosecution. He said he would name Lindsey Halligan, an assistant from the White House, to serve as an American lawyer for the Virginia Oriental District. She was one of Trump’s personal lawyers and has no experience as a federal prosecutor.

“We can no longer delay, this kills our reputation and our credibility,” wrote Trump, referring to the fact that he had been charged and dismissed on several occasions. “Justice must be done now !!!”

The office that filed the case against Comey, the Virginia Oriental District, was thrown into the turmoil last week after The resignation of chief prosecutor Erik Siebert Under pressure to carry accusations against another Trump target, the prosecutor general of New York Letitia James, in An investigation into mortgage fraud.

Halligan rushed to present the case to a great jury this week. The prosecutors evaluated if Comey lied to the congress during the testimony on September 30, 2020, and they had until Tuesday to present a case before the expiration of the limitation period of five years. The push to go ahead came while the prosecutors of the office had detailed in the concerns of the memo concerning the continuation of an indictment.

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Trump has had for years a conclusion from American intelligence agencies that Russia preferred him to Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 elections and the criminal investigation that tried to determine if his campaign had plotted with Moscow to influence the outcome of this race. The prosecutors led by a special lawyer Robert Mueller did not establish that Trump or his associates have criminally collus with Russia, but they found that Trump’s campaign had welcomed the help of Moscow.

Trump seized the fact that the Mueller’s investigation had not found that the Trump campaign and the Kremlin were collided, and that there was Important errors and omissions Made by the FBI in electronic listening applications, to claim justification. A one -year investigation into a potential fault during the investigation in Russia was carried out by another special council, John Durham. This has produced three criminal cases, especially against an FBI lawyer, but not against senior government officials.

The criminal case against Comey does not concern the substance of the investigation in Russia. Rather, he accused him of having lied to a senatorial committee during his appearance in 2020 when he said that he had never authorized anyone to serve as an anonymous source for a journalist about the investigation.

Trump’s administration is trying to launch the investigation in Russia as the outgrowth of an effort under Democratic President Barack Obama to overhyp Moscow’s interference in the elections and undermine the legitimacy of Trump’s victory.

Administration officials, including Director of CIA, John Ratcliffe, and national intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard, have declassified a series of documents Intended to keep the force of an intelligence assessment from the Obama era published in January 2017 which said that Moscow had had a large interference campaign in the direction of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Comey has been a first -rate antagonist for years. Comey was a senior official of the Ministry of Justice in the administration of Republican President George W. Bush, was chosen by Obama to lead the FBI in 2013 and was director when the office opened the investigation in Russia.

Comey’s relationship with Trump was tense from the start and was exacerbated when Comey resisted a Trump request at a private dinner at the White House to start personal loyalty to the president. This opening has annoyed the director of the FBI so much that he documented it in a contemporary memorandum.

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

After being released, Comey authorized a close friend to share with a journalist the substance of an unsecified memo who documented an oval office request from Trump to end an FBI investigation into his first national security advisor, Michael Flynn. Trump and his allies later scored Comey A Leaker, the president even accusing him of betrayal. Comey himself called Trump “led to the ego” and compared it to a mafia don.

The Ministry of Justice, during Trump’s first term, refused to continue Comey for the treatment of his memos. The department inspector general published a severe critical report in 2019 which said that Comey had violated FBI policies, notably by not making documents in the FBI after being dismissed and to share them with his personal lawyers without authorization from the FBI.

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Earlier this year, the department The daughter of Comey, Maurene Comey, dismissed from her prosecutor in the South New York District. She has since continued, saying that the termination had been carried out without any explanation and was made for political reasons.