Soon after the US government charged former FBI Director James Comey with making a false statement to Congress and obstructing one of its investigations, President Donald Trump praised the indictment of his long-standing political foe and posted on social media that Comey had told a “far-reaching lie”.<\/p>\n
Trump and Comey have been locked in a public grudge match for nearly a decade, and the president has often said Comey belongs in prison. Comey, who has likened Trump to a mob boss and criticised him frequently, denies the charges.<\/p>\n
But Trump’s comments on the indictment, and his public pressure on the justice department to secure it, may have created a weakness in the case and made it harder for prosecutors to win a conviction in court, former federal prosecutors say.<\/p>\n
They are warning that Trump’s public attacks on Comey and the unusual circumstances leading up to the indictment could cast doubt on the integrity of the process.<\/p>\n
“This looks like a slapdash rush to the courthouse with one goal in mind: to achieve the president’s aims in charging a perceived political foe with a felony,” said Kevin Flynn, who served as a federal prosecutor in Washington, DC, for three decades.<\/p>\n
The indictment against Comey is just two pages long and comes with little information, making it difficult to assess the strength of the accusations or underlying evidence.<\/p>\n
While some indictments can be short, the brevity of this one was “beyond unusual” for such a high-profile political case, said Marcos Jim\u00e9nez, who served as the US Attorney for the Southern District of Florida under Republican President George W Bush.<\/p>\n
To convict Comey, the government needs to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he knowingly lied to Congress, Mr Flynn said. That would require showing a jury definitive proof that Comey knew he was misleading Congress, such as witness statements, documentation and other forms of evidence.<\/p>\n
“The best perjury cases involve corroboration,” Mr Flynn said.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, federal prosecutors asked a grand jury to indict Comey on three charges. The jury decided there was only enough evidence to charge him for two counts, court records show. <\/p>\n
The proceedings of grand juries, which only decide if a case against a person might succeed in court, are secret and sealed, meaning only a small group of people know what evidence was considered in charging Comey.<\/p>\n
Mr Jiminez warned that the bar that evidence must clear for a grand jury is lower than at a trial where a conviction hangs in the balance.<\/p>\n
“The standard met at the grand jury level is: Is this likely to have happened?'” Mr Jim\u00e9nez said. <\/p>\n
While charging a figure as high-ranking as Comey was unusual, Annemarie McAvoy, a professor at Columbia Law School, told the BBC’s Sumi Somaskanda that there is a history of indicting officials for lying to lawmakers and obstructing congressional investigations. She added that it was possible, although could be difficult, to win a conviction.<\/p>\n
Comey has been accused of lying when he was asked during a 2020 congressional hearing if he authorised leaking to the press information related to an FBI investigation.<\/p>\n
“If there are others who are willing to come forward and say, ‘yes, I got the information from James Comey,’ then potentially they certainly have a case,” Ms McAvoy said.<\/p>\n
Questionable circumstances surround the indictment<\/p>\n
Over the last week Trump has used his Truth Social platform to openly call for the prosecutions of Comey and other figures who have opposed him. <\/p>\n
When the US Attorney in Virginia refused to carry out the prosecutions and resigned, Trump installed a prosecutor from his own orbit to the office, Lindsey Halligan, who then sought the indictment.<\/p>\n
Several legal experts told the BBC that Trump’s actions could provide an opening for Comey to move to dismiss the case on the grounds of selective or vindictive prosecution.<\/p>\n
After Comey’s indictment, Trump posted on Truth Social calling Comey a “dirty cop,” and writing that a “big price must be paid” for the former FBI director’s alleged false statements. <\/p>\n
Before, on 20 September, Trump had complained in a lengthy post that “nothing is being done” on taking legal action against some of his political opponents, including Comey. They were “guilty as hell,” he declared.<\/p>\n
“The President’s social media posts and statements are a major problem for the prosecution, both legally and practically,” said Jeffrey Bellin, a professor at Vanderbilt University Law School. <\/p>\n
“From the outside, it looks like this prosecution was brought at the direct request of the President, over the objections of the professional prosecutors against a political opponent. And this all happened in public view.”<\/p>\n
Trump, however, denies any political motive.<\/p>\n
“It’s about justice, not revenge,” he told White House reporters on Friday. “It’s about justice.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Soon after the US government charged former FBI Director James Comey with making a false statement to Congress…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172265,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,75,348],"class_list":["post-172264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172264\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}