The US justice department has filed charges against James Comey after pressure from Donald Trump to prosecute the former FBI director who investigated contacts between the president’s 2016 campaign and Russia.
The Department of Justice said late on Thursday it had obtained a grand jury indictment in a federal court in Virginia against Comey, accusing him of “serious crimes related to the disclosure of sensitive information”.
The indictment cites Comey’s testimony to a US Senate committee in 2020 as the basis for charges of lying to Congress and obstructing a congressional proceeding.
Trump celebrated the move on Truth Social, writing: “JUSTICE IN AMERICA! One of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to is James Comey, the former Corrupt Head of the FBI.”
“Today he was indicted by a Grand Jury on two felony counts for various illegal and unlawful acts,” the president added.
On Friday morning, Trump suggested that Comey could benefit from the assignation of judge Michael Nachmanoff to oversee his case.
Calling Comey a “Dirty Cop”, the president added that the former FBI director had been assigned “a Crooked Joe Biden appointed Judge, so he’s off to a very good start”.
The indictment marks a dramatic step up in the Trump administration’s attack on his political enemies. The justice department is also investigating Lisa Cook, a top Federal Reserve official, and Trump himself has launched a series of lawsuits against media groups and issued executive orders targeting law firms.
It will also raise worries about the long-standing precedent that the DoJ operates at arm’s length from the White House — a norm established after Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal in the 1970s.
Comey responded to his indictment in a video posted on social media.
“My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump. But we couldn’t imagine ourselves living any other way. We will not live on our knees and you shouldn’t either,” he said.
“I have great confidence in the federal judicial system and I’m innocent. So let’s have a trial and keep the faith,” he added.
The indictment comes days after Trump picked Lindsey Halligan, his former personal lawyer, to lead the US attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia, where the DoJ obtained the indictment against Comey.
The indictment does not bear the signature of any career prosecutors at the US attorney’s office and was signed only by Halligan. She is also the only justice department official listed for the case on the court docket.
“This kind of interference is a dangerous abuse of power,” Mark Warner, the Democratic senator from Virginia, said in a statement on Thursday.
“By ousting a respected, independent prosecutor and replacing him with a partisan loyalist, Trump is undermining one of the most important US Attorney’s offices in the country and eroding the rule of law itself,” Warner added.
Trump mentioned Halligan in a social media post last week urging his attorney-general Pam Bondi to prosecute Comey as well as Letitia James, New York state’s top prosecutor, who sued Trump for exaggerating the value of his real estate assets.
“No one is above the law,” Bondi said on Thursday. “Today’s indictment reflects this Department of Justice’s commitment to holding those who abuse positions of power accountable for misleading the American people. We will follow the facts in this case.”
If convicted, Comey faces up to five years in prison, although sentences for federal crimes are often lower than maximum levels.
The indictment centres on the former FBI director’s testimony before the Senate judiciary committee on September 30 2020, when he was questioned by Republican Senator Ted Cruz about whether he authorised anyone at the FBI to leak information to the press.
Comey said he stood by prior testimony denying he gave that authorisation. His statement conflicted with separate testimony by former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, who said Comey had effectively done so.
Trump fired Comey as head of the FBI in 2017 as he was overseeing a probe into contacts between Trump’s presidential campaign and Russian officials.
His dismissal led to the appointment of Robert Mueller, who had previously led the FBI, as special counsel to take over the investigation. Mueller ultimately found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow, and the president condemned the probe as a “witch-hunt”.
Comey and Trump have since exchanged withering attacks, with the former FBI head branding the president’s leadership as “transactional, ego driven and about personal loyalty”. In 2018, Trump called Comey “the worst leader, by far, in the history of the FBI”.
The charges against Comey come shortly after his daughter Maurene Comey, a former prosecutor in the Manhattan US Attorney’s Office, sued the DoJ over her abrupt firing in July.
She accused the agency of dismissing her “solely or substantially because her father is former FBI director James B Comey, or because of her perceived political affiliation and beliefs, or both”.
Maurene Comey worked on high-profile cases, including against late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell and Sean Combs.
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