GrowlTowel said:
Osodecentx said:
The Comey case should be dismissed.
As anticipated, former FBI Director James Comey asked the Virginia federal court on Monday to dismiss the Trump Justice Department's indictment against him on the grounds that (a) he is being subjected to an unconstitutionally selective, vindictive prosecution, (b) by an interim U.S. attorney who is statutorily unqualified to serve in that position.
From Andrew McCarthy at National Review
Interesting. Nothing about the underlying evidence.
Comey Pretrial Motions Highlight Patent Failure of the Indictment to State a CrimeThe case should be dismissed.
As anticipated, former FBI Director James Comey asked the Virginia federal court on Monday to dismiss the Trump Justice Department's indictment against him on the grounds that (a)
he is being subjected to an unconstitutionally selective, vindictive prosecution, (b) by an
interim U.S. attorney who is statutorily unqualified to serve in that position. While the motions to dismiss appear strong, I believe that is secondary to what they convey about the disarray of the prosecution and incoherence of the charges.
I'll address this in a series of posts. Let's start with the big picture.
Notably, Comey's defense lawyers report (without apparent contradiction from the government) that on October 20 i.e., nearly a month after the
indictment, all 17 lines of it, was filed the prosecution finally notified Comey that the mysterious "Person 1" and "Person 3" referred to in the two-count indictment are Hillary Clinton and Columbia law professor Daniel Richman. The guesswork on this topic has been intense because the charges that Comey gave false testimony to Congress, and thus obstructed its oversight investigation, do not explain with clarity what Comey allegedly did to violate the law. (See
Rule 7(c)(1), Fed. R. Crim. P.: "The indictment . . . must be a plain, concise, and definite statement of the essential facts constituting the offense charged"; see also the
Sixth Amendment, mandating that the accuse "be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation.")
Botched Questioning Shreds Hillary Clinton Designation as Person 1To use the clinical legal term,
the Comey indictment is a joke. That is largely because it is based on questioning that Senator Ted Cruz botched, and that had nothing to do with what the Trump DOJ claims Comey was somehow willfully lying about.
Which brings us to Person 1, Hillary Clinton. Ostensibly, former Secretary of State Clinton was denominated as Person 1 in deference to the DOJ's policy against naming uncharged persons in publicly filed indictments.
In reality, we now know that Halligan was trying to paper over a fatal flaw in her case.In the 2020 testimony, Senator Cruz implied that Comey had lied in testimony to the committee three years earlier, when he asserted that he had never "authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source" in news reports.
As the hearing transcript elucidates (at approximately the 1:52 mark),
Cruz was very specifically alleging that Comey had authorized his then-deputy, Andrew McCabe, to leak information to the Wall Street Journal about an FBI investigation of the Clinton Foundation.As I've explained, however,
Cruz had his facts wrong: McCabe has admitted that he personally authorized the WSJ leak (which, as deputy director, he had authority to do without the director's pre-approval); McCabe didn't discuss the matter with Comey until after the
WSJ report was published. That is why, even though Cruz was expressly and emphatically asking about
McCabe, Halligan is desperately trying to imply that the testimony was about
Richman, who like Comey had nothing to do with the
WSJ report. (We'll come to that momentarily.)
Nevertheless, the court should not even need to reach that problem in order to find the indictment infirm. That's because
Halligan used the "Person 1" formulation in an amateurish attempt to hide that Cruz also misstated what the leak was about. In the indictment, Halligan alleges Comey falsely stated that he had not authorized an FBI official to leak details "regarding
an FBI investigation of Person 1." My italics there refer to the FBI's Clinton
Foundation probe, sensitive details about which McCabe admits he leaked to the
WSJ. Obviously, that's what Cruz
meant to ask about.
In posing the question, though, the senator misspoke. He asked whether Comey denied authorizing an FBI official to leak details of "the Clinton
administration." The Clinton administration, of course, was presided over by President Bill Clinton, not Person 1 (his wife Hillary), and ended both before the Clinton Foundation was established in 2001 and 13 years before Comey became FBI director.
Manifestly, Comey cannot have authorized a leak about an FBI investigation of the Clinton administration that (during his tenure as FBI) did not exist. Halligan cannot camouflage this gaping hole in her case by using the denomination "Person 1" to divert attention from Cruz's failure to ask about the Clinton Foundation. Even if we stipulate that Clinton Foundation is what Cruz meant to say, it's not what he did say.Understand: To prevail on charges that Comey made a false statement and obstructed Congress, the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he understood precisely what was being asked and willfully lied in responding. The government can't conceivably prove that. Although there is no reason to believe Comey lied about the McCabe leak to the
WSJ regarding the Clinton Foundation (the Justice Department inspector general
concluded otherwise in a scathing
report about McCabe),
the court should never reach that question because Comey was not even asked about Hillary Clinton (Person 1) and the Clinton family's foundation. He was asked about the Clinton administration.Hence, Comey has a defense that his testimony was literally true and far clearer than the government's incoherent version of events i.e., he never authorized anyone at the FBI to leak information about an investigation of the Clinton administration.
(THERE IS MORE TO THE ARTICLE, IT IS DELETED FOR THE SAKE OF BREVITY)
https://www.nationalreview.com/2025/10/comey-pretrial-motions-highlight-patent-failure-of-the-indictment-to-state-a-crime/
