{"id":160822,"date":"2025-09-26T03:59:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-26T03:59:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/160822\/"},"modified":"2025-09-26T03:59:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T03:59:08","slug":"live-updates-former-fbi-director-james-comey-indicted-on-two-charges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/160822\/","title":{"rendered":"Live updates: Former FBI director James Comey indicted on two charges"},"content":{"rendered":"

Comey indictment is ‘unprecedented’ and ‘vindictive’, says former prosecutorpublished at 02:32 BST<\/p>\n

02:32 BST<\/p>\n

\"Former<\/p>\n

Former prosecutor Laurie Levenson has just spoken to the BBC and says Comey’s indictment is “unprecedented” and “troubling”.<\/p>\n

“It is troubling because the prior prosecutor who evaluated this case said they did not have evidence to prove it,” she said.<\/p>\n

“Everything about this smacks of vindictive prosecution.”<\/p>\n

Levenson says Comey’s indictment appears “retaliatory” and “tit-for-tat at a very high level”, going further than even President Richard Nixon’s political “enemies list”.<\/p>\n

When asked what this means for the safeguards against White House interference with the Department of Justice, Levenson says: “That wall has completely collapsed and it collapsed with this case,” she said.<\/p>\n

If convicted, Comey could face prison time, but Levenson says the challenge for prosecutors is to prove that Comey’s statements to Congress in 2020 were false.<\/p>\n

“Especially when you take into account what James Comey was thinking and what his intent was at the time,” she said<\/p>\n

“Even if James Comey got things wrong, that doesn’t mean he knowingly or intentionally lied to Congress.”<\/p>\n

Levenson says it’s still unclear what evidence was presented to the grand jury that made them agree to go ahead with the indictment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Comey indictment is ‘unprecedented’ and ‘vindictive’, says former prosecutorpublished at 02:32 BST 02:32 BST Former prosecutor Laurie Levenson…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":160823,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-160822","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}