President Donald Trump campaigned in part on a pledge to secure accountability for those who weaponized federal agencies in recent years, and last week’s indictment of one of his longstanding foes has been greeted by many supporters as a promising start.
As Just the News reports, former FBI Director James Comey, now facing criminal charges of making false statements to Congress, placed himself in legal peril by holding firm in 2020 testimony to prior denials of questionable conduct related to leaks of classified information.
The actions of the former FBI director were previously scrutinized amid the agency’s earlier Arctic Haze and Tropic Vortex leak inquiries.
Though details of Comey’s actions were reviewed by former U.S. Attorney John Durham, the controversial ex-FBI chief never faced criminal charges -- until this week.
This week, it was announced that a federal grand jury handed up two charges against Comey -- one for making a false statement and another for obstruction -- both stemming from claims that Comey misled lawmakers in September 2020 when he reiterated a prior 2017 denial of having approved a leak of information to the media regarding the Trump-Russia collusion probe or Hillary Clinton-linked investigations.
The indictment at hand claims that Comey “did willfully and knowingly make a materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statement in a matter within the jurisdiction of the legislative branch of the Government of the United States by falsely stating to a U.S. Senator during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing….”
At issue was Comey’s reiteration of his prior statement that he had not “authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports’ regarding an FBI probe concerning “PERSON 1,” an individual whose identity was not included in the indictment.
The 2017 exchange that laid the groundwork for Comey’s later testimony came during a May 2017 Judiciary Committee hearing in which Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) asked whether the witness had “ever been an anonymous source in news reports about matters relating to the Trump investigation or the Clinton investigation.”
Comey flatly replied, “Never,” prompting Grassley to continue his line of questioning.
The senator then asked Comey if he had “ever authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports about the Trump investigation or the Clinton investigation,” to which the longtime bureaucrat said, “No,” and when asked if details of the same had been declassified and shared with journalists, he replied, “Not to my knowledge.”
Though his exchange with Grassley is beyond the reach of the statute of limitations, Comey was again questioned on the topic in 2020 by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).
When asked about testimony from former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe indicating that such leaks did occur and that Comey authorized them, he said, “I stand by the testimony you summarized that I gave in May of 2017.”
Though many of the president’s supporters certainly hope that Comey’s own statements will be his undoing as the criminal case against him progresses, at least one prominent legal commentator has cast doubt on federal prosecutors’ ability to make these charges stick.
As The Hill reports, Fox News contributor Andy McCarthy has already gone on record saying, “I don’t think there’s a case, noting, “If you look closely at what McCabe said, what McCabe said was that he directed a leak to the Wall Street Journal and told Comey about it after the fact. So it’s true that Comey never authorized it in the sense of OKing it before it happened.” Whether his take on the situation ultimately proves correct or Comey ultimately receives the legal reckoning millions believe is long overdue, only time will tell.
