He’s walking on this but I’d assume the Trump administration can find some other bullshit to charge him with. Maybe they can classify him as a domestic terrorist for his “8647” picture.
(for those who missed it, Comey posted an Instagram picture with some seashells spelling out 8647, which Trump interpreted as a literal death threat and Comey was investigated for this)
If there is actual probable cause to indict Trump’s enemies, sure, it is incompetence. But in the Comey case, is there really some offense that a more competent federal prosecutor could have brought to trial?
The contrary example, where we see an apparently competent prosecution of a Trump enemy, is the Bolton case. From what I read, Bolton may be acquitted if he takes the big risk of going to trial. But there is real evidence that’s a problem for Bolton. With most of the other Trump enemies, I question whether there is enough for a competent prosecutor, who respects statutes of limitation, to work with.
I know that there are cases where a judge says, “Ya know, this case will go very different directions based on the answer expected to come out of that other case.” Or, “This is basically the same as that other case.” And either puts it on held pending the other outcome or merges it over into another case.
I’m not sure what the latitude is for them to do that (?) but it feels like the judge might be able to backbench answering the prejudice question until the vindictive prosecution matter is settled - even though that’s a separate case in a different court. And then, should that matter take more than 6 months for the Government to provide all of the materials that Comey’s team has requested, or the judge’s schedule is just a little too busy to handle the matter, then that could end that right there.
IMO there’s lots enough misconduct wrt the misstatements of law to the grand jury and this whole revised indictment with no new vote thing to dismiss with prejudice without even considering the vindictive prosecution question.
No, no career prosecutors wanted to touch this case. That is why ms halligan ended up in this pickle.
I think I love you.
And, indeed, why the entire Trump administration is a suckage of sycophants and a cesspool of incompetence. I don’t know if it’s always accurate to say that Trump corrupts everything he touches; he often does, in the manner of an infectious virus, but he often just seeks out corruption where it already exists, and exploits it.
She was a DEI* hire.
*Donald’s Entourage of Incompetents
I just listened to the 10/31 Lawfare podcast. One of them was saying that there’s also a pre-trial motion to dismiss on the basis that the question that Comey was being asked was confusing and ambiguous.
The question, apparently, was “whether Comey stood by his 2017 testimony.” But this was among a series of questions about whether he’d told McCabe anything while his 2017 series of questioning was about whether he’d authorized Richman to talk to the press. There was no apparent connection to the line of questioning taking place and, while Comey might stand behind his 2017 testimony, it wouldn’t have been clear what that had to do with the topic at hand or specifically which part of the 2017 testimony was being alluded to.
In terms of the trial, you don’t need to go through discovery or complex legal decisions since, “Was it ambiguous?” Well, yes it was.
You can still put Halligan up for sanctions and report her to the police for, potentially, creating a fake indictment.
There’s no real need to force Comey to stay involved and funding his lawyers longer than necessary if there’s a quick and easy way to dump the case.
I don’t have the quote, but essentially the question was whether Comey had authorized someone at the FBI to leak info to the news. Comey’s answer was simply that he stood by his prior testimony.
As a “question” in a Congressional hearing it probably come after a lengthy lecture with compound info, etc so certainly very confusing and ambiguous.
The answer is true, though. It’s literally true that Comey stood by his prior testimony - whether that prior testimony was truthful or not. The motion is a Bronson “literal truth” motion. It’s the idea that even if the answer is misleading, as long as it is literally the truth, you can’t be charged with perjury.
I think in the Bronson case he was asked if he had a Swiss Bank account. He answered No (he had closed it a few hours earlier). Did he ever have one? No (“He” did not have one, but his company did). Etc. Bronson was definitely trying to be evasive and misleading, but his answers were literally truthful and were found to not be perjury. It’s on the questioner to ask better questions.
Late: Not that it matters, but along the same lines, the person who released the info for Comey no longer worked at the FBI when they released the info and so that could be why Comey so “No” when originally answered the question in 2017 - again, literal truth.
Right.
Because, even if we assume Comey perjured himself in 2017, the statute of limitations for that is up.
So they are using testimony from a later date because that was still (barely) inside the statute of limitations. But that testimony doesn’t have direct questions related to the Richman issue. It just has the blanket “do you stand by your 2017 testimony” question.
I guess the legal question here is does a summary “yes, I stand by my past testimony” re-open perjury charges that would otherwise be time-barred. I’d think not - you would need the new testimony to be perjurious in and of itself. “I stand by my testimony” is not a lie, even if the previous testimony was a lie.
Meant to add this to my post above. My post above is more focused on the answer and not the very confusing question as you/Sage_Rat describe. The question definitely has its own set of serious problems. Perjury requires a clear question.
You’re correct. Generally, it’s not possible to extend the 5-year statute of limitations even if there was a very clean question and a very clean answer in 2020. The 2017 question/answer is time-barred. The new 2020 question/answer would just be a new offense. There are very limited exceptions and they don’t remotely apply here (War, avoiding prosecution, etc).
The prosecution is trying to have it both ways. The lie is by the prosecutor in the indictment when they claim on Sep 30, 2020 that Comey said he had “not authorized someone to be an anonymous source in news reports” at the FBI (the prosecutor used “ “ in the indictment). Comey did not say those words on that date. That is false. If they wanted to charge the 2017 offense, they need to use that date and explain why it’s not time-barred. Or, use the actual 2020 testimony and explain why that is perjury.
It feels like we’re just doing the prosecutor a big favor by cleaning it all up for them to make sense of what they charged. It’s not more complicated than is standing by your previous testimony a lie. No, it’s not. Next.
The handling of getting a signed indictment to the judge is so totally screwed up, it makes me wonder: Did none of the career prosecutors in the office know what was happening and realize what a clusterfuck was being perpetrated? Did one or more know, try to warn Trump’s bobblehead, and get blown off in the rush to beat the deadline? Or did one or more seasoned prosecutors know and quietly decide not to bail out the nincompoop that had been inflicted on the office? A sort of passive resistance to the perversion of justice?
And it just gets worse. There’s so much flop sweat here, it’s a wonder no one is drowning.
Welp, some attorney (who is under common law an officer of the court) has lied or is lying to the judge. This will not end well.
ETA: Oh my god – read the full article, and I see the trumpy doll has published a nasty attack on the judge.
The first rule of getting out of a hole is to stop digging. I swear if I wrote this into a book of fiction the critics would eviscerate me for writing something so ridiculous.
Can the judge call in the members of the grand jury, and ask them if they were given the two count version of the indictment? I mean, this is a simple matter of fact, and yet they’ve managed to muddy the waters beyond belief.
A certain scene in a movie comes to mind:
Sounds like a strong strategy. A strategy that shows strongness, and strength.
And in it, she lies mischaracterizes what was said.
“Personal attacks – like Judge Nachmanoff referring to me as a ‘puppet’ – don’t change the facts or the law,” Halligan said in an statement exclusively to the New York Post.
But:
The statements refer to an exchange between Judge Nachmanoff and Comey’s attorney in which Nachmanoff questioned whether their position was that Halligan was serving as a “puppet” or a “stalking horse” for President Donald Trump in his orders for retribution against Comey.
But Nachmanoff never asserted directly that Halligan was a “puppet,” and didn’t dispute in court when Lemons flatly rejected that characterization.
“So your view is that Ms. Halligan is a stalking horse or a puppet, for want of a better word, doing the president’s bidding?” Judge Nachmanoff asked Dreeben during the exchange.
“Well, I don’t want to use language about Ms. Halligan that suggests anything other than she did what she was told to do,” Dreeben replied. “The president of the United States has the authority to direct prosecutions. She worked in the White House. She was surely aware of the president’s directive.”