James Comey made history this week by standing in the dock and entering a not guilty plea as the first FBI Director ever indicted in the history of the country. Comey hopes to be spared the added ignoble distinction of a trial scheduled for 2026. He and his counsel, Patrick Fitzgerald, are reportedly going to seek a dismissal under three primary challenges: vindictive prosecution, selective prosecution, and challenging the status of the acting U.S. Attorney, Lindsey Halligan. I wanted to briefly address these claims, including the one that has the most credibility.
As a threshold matter, there is a particular irony in the date selected for the Comey trial: January 5, 2026. That is the anniversary of a notorious briefing of President Barack Obama that laid the foundation for the Russian collusion investigation that Comey would push as director. The intelligence community had already debunked the infamous Steele Dossier, secretly funded and disseminated by the Clinton campaign. Indeed, an intelligence community assessment had found no evidence of a material impact of Russian actors on the 2016 election. Top officials immediately moved to bury the report and to order a new report by a carefully selected group in the final days of the Obama Administration. The result was a report that was ultimately leaked to the media suggesting that there was evidence of Russian interference with the election in support of Trump. Comey and others would use the report to justify what would later become the special counsel’s investigation that effectively derailed Trump’s first term.
Comey is now scheduled to answer for alleged lies and leaks on the ninth anniversary of that meeting.
Vindictive Prosecution
The first two claims are equally laden with a heavy dose of irony. Comey has been accused of intense bias in his actions as FBI Director in targeting Trump and his associates. His top aides expressed open animus for Trump, leaked stories to harm him, and even committed crimes to continue an investigation that was debunked before it started.
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