James Comey is not above the law

Days before the five-year statute of limitations was due to expire, the long arm of the law finally has caught up with the slippery former FBI Director James B. Comey. A federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, has indicted Comey for leaking and lying about his role in the Russian hoax that President Trump’s enemies tried to hang around his head like a noose even before he was inaugurated in 2016.

Count one of the federal indictment charges Comey with making a false statement during a September 30, 2020 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Specifically, Comey claimed he had not “authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports” regarding FBI investigations into President Trump and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The indictment describes this Comey claim as a false statement.

Count two of the federal indictment charges Comey with obstruction of a Congressional proceeding, “by making false and misleading statements before” the Senate Judiciary Committee on the same date.

The subject of the hearing, of course, was the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation, prompted by a Democrat operative, of the Trump campaign’s purported ties to Russia during the 2016 election as well as the Bureau’s failure to recommend charges against Hillary Clinton for her use of a private server to store secret government communications. Career prosecutor and special counsel John Durham conducted a three-year investigation into the origins of Crossfire Hurricane, and he concluded the investigation was so ill-founded it should never have been initiated.

In a press release, FBI Director Kash Patel stated, “Today, your FBI took another step in its promise of full accountability. For far too long, previous corrupt leadership and their enablers weaponized federal law enforcement, damaging once proud institutions and severely eroding public trust… Nowhere was this politicization of law enforcement more blatant than during the Russiagate hoax, a disgraceful chapter in history we continue to investigate and expose.”

Comey responded on Instagram this evening, “I’m innocent. So let’s have a trial.”

Critics already have begun recycling arguments that (i) the President is persecuting his political opponents, just as they viciously hunted him for over a decade; (ii) Lindsey Halligan, the newly minted interim U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virgina, overrode the recommendations of career prosecutors in seeking this indictment; and (iii) Comey’s alleged crimes amount to applesauce.

The chutzpah of the President’s critics who invested vast resources in weaponizing the justice system against him, coast to coast, could not be overstated. True, he has a penchant for speaking his mind in ways that sometimes frustrate even his supporters, but the President simply had no role before today’s grand jury.

It is also true that someone in the orbit of the U.S. Department of Justice leaked information to the press that suggested one or more career prosecutors displayed skepticism regarding bringing Comey to justice. Leaks are loathsome, and may be criminal, when coming from a source within the leading law enforcement agency in the nation, as this very case demonstrates. Regardless of the internal politics that swirled within the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the final decision was not made by line prosecutors, the U.S. Attorney, or even the Attorney General of the United States. The final vote on Comey’s fate, at this stage and at trial, remains in the hands of the American people. Today, a grand jury, not a politician, indicted Comey.

Recognized as early as the Magna Carta in 1215 A.D., the grand jury has long served as a cornerstone of Anglo-American law. A grand jury consists of sixteen to twenty-three U.S. citizens registered to vote who generally serve 18-24 months. At least twelve members of the grand jury must vote in favor of an indictment before a true bill is returned. Service requires a serious commitment. The defamation that twelve to twenty-three randomly selected voters would trade their integrity so cheaply reflects ignorance of the careful process that marks grand jury deliberations, an outsized regard for the influence of any given public official on a private process, and a very jaundiced view of American justice.

This brings us to the actual substance of Comey’s alleged crimes. Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe publicly and repeatedly claimed that Comey had authorized him to leak information through high-ranking FBI officials to The Wall Street Journal about FBI investigations. Comey denied authorizing the leak. The question before the petit jury that will decide Comey’s fate at the trial he very clearly now seeks is the same question with which Senator Ted Cruz confronted Comey at that now infamous Senate Judiciary Committee hearing nearly five years ago: who is lying? Once again, the American people will decide, based on the facts and the law. And as Attorney General Pam Bondi reminded us this evening, “No one is above the law.”