After Comey, who’s next?

Cockburn has awakened from his Russiagate slumber with the news that the Trump administration is seeking to file charges against former CIA director James Comey in federal court within the next few days. The statute of limitations on Comey’s September 30, 2020 testimony about ties between Russia and Trump’s second campaign for president is about to expire, meaning we’re set to re-litigate the Mueller Report. While we’re at it, why not take a look at Solyndra, yellowcake uranium, Whitewater, Iran-Contra, Watergate and Credit Mobilier?  

Russiagate is a bit more current, though, and Trump is flinging his prosecutors all over the room. There’s no guarantee that a grand jury will deliver a Comey indictment, but if it does, it will unload a whole clip of blasts from the past onto the headlines. John Bolton, the warmonger with the walrus mustache, already woke up one recent summer morning to a raid of his home office. The feds say they found classified documents in his possession, though the content of those documents remains, unsurprisingly, classified.  

Former National Security Agency director Mike Rogers, who once said he didn’t have “sufficient access” to intelligence regarding Russia and that he wasn’t “100 percent comfortable” making claims, should be safe. Not so James Clapper, former director of National Intelligence, and former CIA director John Brennan. Clapper, who always did enjoy talking to Jake Tapper, is now a “national security analyst” for CNN, while John Brennan delivers what Cockburn is certain are completely unbiased political takes for MSNBC. Cockburn isn’t sure exactly what they’ll be saying about a potential Comey indictment in the coming days, but it’ll likely be many thousands of words of blather along the lines of “not my movie.”  

Also returning from the dead letter office into the sights of the Crossfire Hurricane will be former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, charged with investigating Hillary Clinton’s email server and Russia election interference back in the previous decade. Strzok and Page provided the smoking gun, according to an Office of the Inspector General Report. Page texted Strzok, “Trump’s not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” and Strzok replied, “No. No he’s not. We’ll stop it.” Page resigned. The FBI fired Strzok, who sued the FBI for wrongful termination, but a court threw out that suit this month.  

Now we’re set to revisit the FBI comedy duo of Strzok and Page, and all their greatest hits. What did James Comey know, and when did he know it? Did he lie? Was it an accident or on purpose? Trump has installed one of his personal lawyers, Lindsey Halligan, as the US attorney for Eastern Virginia, withdrawing the nomination of Erik Seibert because “two terrible SLEAZEBAG Democratic Senators supported him.”  

“I fired him, and there is a GREAT CASE, and many lawyers, and legal pundits, say so. Lindsey Halligan is a really good lawyer,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “What about Comey, Adam “Shifty” Schiff, Leticia??? They’re all guilty as hell.” Halligan, 36, has been part of Trump’s legal team since 2022 and was present for the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago raid. She also twice attempted to become Miss Colorado in college.

Comey, for his part, hasn’t posted a tweet since June, which was when Mysterious Press posted his latest legal thriller FDR Drive. The book’s major theme is internet extremism on, you guessed it, the right. It got a nice review from Publisher’s Weekly. Cockburn suspects that Comey is about to live his own real-life legal thriller, but he’s not going to be able to choose the ending.