Donald Trump’s campaign of retribution against James Comey isn’t over yet. The president has tried to prosecute the former FBI director twice already: once for lying to Congress, a case that was dismissed because the prosecutor who brought it was illegally appointed, and again in April, on charges of threatening the president over an Instagram photo of seashells spelling out “86 47.”
Now, Trump’s Justice Department has accused Comey of leaking classified material, filing what’s known as a criminal “information”—a charging document that circumvents the grand jury, at least for now—to stop the clock on a statute of limitations that was about to run out.
The New York Times explains the latest political prosecution:
Federal prosecutors have brought new charges against James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, accusing him of mishandling national security information in October 2016 that they said ended up in a New York Times article, according to court papers unsealed on Monday. ... Mr. Comey is accused of knowingly and willfully causing national defense information to be “communicated, delivered and transmitted to a person not entitled to receive it” around Oct. 4 and 5 of 2016. Court papers in the case point to an Oct. 5 article in The Times describing a novel use of surveillance authority involving Yahoo emails.
Lawyers for Mr. Comey said in court papers that the issue had twice been investigated, including during the first Trump administration, and had not led to charges either time. ... Prosecutors, in court papers, said that the Times article came about because Mr. Comey “sought to correct misinformation which had appeared in the press by way of Reuters the day before.”
The administration’s zeal to get Comey has once again outrun its competence. Prosecutors waited until the eve of a decade-long deadline, then tried to beat it with a filing that may not stop the clock. Comey’s lawyers argue that the 10-year window for national security cases applies only to indictments, and an “information” isn’t one. Even Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee, seemed inclined to agree at a hearing on Friday that “indictment” means indictment. He also suggested waiting to see whether the government can get a grand jury to indict Comey at all, since grand juries in Washington keep turning away cases that smack of presidential animus.
Facing that prospect, prosecutors got creative, floating a new theory that the alleged conspiracy ran as late as April 2017—which would, conveniently, give them until next spring to secure an indictment. It’s hard to see this as anything other than a pretext for going after one of Trump’s most outspoken critics.
Comey is already arguing in North Carolina that the “86 47” case is a selective and vindictive prosecution. A case dredged up from files that Trump’s own first-term DOJ closed without charges can only strengthen that argument. As Comey himself aptly put it, “It would almost be funny if it weren’t such an appalling abuse of the Department of Justice.”
The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.
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