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    Full grand jury didn’t see final Comey indictment, prosecutors admit

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    Federal prosecutors on Wednesday said they had never presented the final version of the indictment filed against James Comey to a full federal grand jury, a concession that adds to mounting challenges in their effort to prosecute the former FBI director.Prosecutors acknowledged the omission during a Wednesday hearing in which Comey’s lawyers argued the case against him should be dismissed because it was a selective and vindictive prosecution.Comey was indicted on 26 September on one count of making a false statement to Congress and one count of obstructing a congressional proceeding in connection with testimony he gave in 2020 in which he said he had not “authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports” regarding Hillary Clinton.Court documents from September show that Lindsey Halligan, a Trump ally installed as a top prosecutor in the case, had sought an additional false statement charge against Comey, but that grand jurors had rejected it.Once the grand jury rejected the charge, Halligan could have had the full grand jury vote again on a copy of the indictment that only included the two charges they voted to indict on, or presented the judge with a three-count indictment crossing out the count on which the grand jury had chosen not to indict on. But, pressed on Wednesday by Michael Nachmanoff, the US district judge overseeing the case, Halligan confirmed that only the foreperson and another grand juror had seen the revised indictment that had only the two charges the grand jury had voted to indict on, CNN and Lawfare reported on Wednesday.Comey’s team therefore views the indictment as null. “There is no indictment Mr Comey is facing,” Michael Dreeben, one of Comey’s lawyers said in court on Wednesday. N Tyler Lemons, an assistant US attorney handling the case, argued that there wasn’t a problem because the final version of the indictment merely removed a charge rejected by the grand jury. “The new indictment wasn’t a new indictment,” he said, according to the Washington Post.Andrew Tessman, a former federal prosecutor in West Virginia and Washington DC, said he saw the issue as “highly problematic” and a “fatal flaw”. “This is just not how grand jury operates,” he said.Halligan is a former insurance lawyer who presented the case to the grand jury herself despite never having previously handled a criminal case.A transcript of the hearing in which the indictment was returned in Comey’s case obtained by CBS News shows some confusion over the indictment. The magistrate judge overseeing it said she had been given two versions of the indictment.“The reason we want to cross all of our T’s and dot all of our I’s in these situations is because the court is also going to take it very seriously for the same reasons. And if you screw up one step in this process, then you’re risking the whole case going away in an embarrassing fashion,” Tessman said. “The US attorney’s office is going to take this whole process very seriously, but the court is going to take it even more seriously. And if they see one thing wrong with how the case was presented to the grand jury, they’re going to err on the side of protecting people’s constitutional rights.”“It’s understandable. You pulled a random insurance lawyer off the street and you put her into the grand jury with no training and no other experienced attorney there,” he added. “It’s not surprising at all that some big mistake was made.”Nachmanoff gave the justice department until 5pm on Wednesday to further explain what happened.Before Trump installed Halligan, it was widely reported that career prosecutors believed there was not sufficient evidence to charge Comey with a crime. On Wednesday, Lemons said the deputy attorney general’s office had instructed him not to disclose whether a memo outlining the reasons for not prosecuting the case existed.Wednesday’s hearing came days after a magistrate judge handling the case said there may have been “government misconduct” and that Halligan made at least two “fundamental and highly prejudicial” misstatements of law to the grand jury. The magistrate judge ordered the prosecutors to take the highly unusual step of turning over grand jury materials to Comey’s team. That order is on hold while an appeal is pending. More

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      FBI worker says he was wrongfully terminated for having Pride flag at desk

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      A longtime FBI employee has filed a lawsuit alleging that he was fired for displaying a Pride flag at his desk, naming FBI director Kash Patel, the justice department and attorney general Pam Bondi as defendants.According to David Maltinsky, an intelligence specialist who had served with the bureau for 16 years, his wrongful termination earlier this year was “unconstitutional and politically motivated”.The lawsuit claims the FBI violated Maltinsky’s first amendment rights and took retaliatory action against him for engaging in protected speech. Maltinsky is seeking a court order to restore his job.Maltinsky’s 18-page complaint, filed on Wednesday in the US district court for the District of Columbia, alleges that he was dismissed from the FBI academy last month for previously displaying the flag at his workstation with the support and permission of his supervisors.According to the complaint, the Pride flag, which the bureau flew from its flagpole in front of its Los Angeles building, was given to Maltinsky in recognition of his efforts to support the FBI’s diversity initiatives.“From a young age, all I have wanted to do is serve my country and ensure its security alongside the brilliant and dedicated men and women of the FBI,” said Maltinsky, who joined the bureau in 2009 and spent more than a decade supporting public corruption and cybercrime investigations including North Korea’s cyberattack on Sony Pictures in 2014.“I displayed that Pride flag – which in 2021 flew in front of the Wilshire federal building – not as a political statement, but as a symbol of inclusion, unity and equal service. These are the values that once made the FBI strong. Now it is a place where people like me are targeted. I believe I was fired not because of who I am, but what I am: a proud gay man,” he added.Earlier this year, Maltinsky was accepted into the FBI special agent training academy at Quantico, Virginia, until what he described as his “abrupt dismissal just three weeks before graduation”.Maltinsky’s lawsuit alleges that at some point after Donald Trump’s inauguration on 20 January, a co-worker reported an alleged concern to Maltinsky’s direct supervisor about the display of the Pride flag at his workstation.“Out of an abundance of caution, Maltinsky requested that the Chief Division Counsel for the LAFO [Los Angeles field office] review whether the display of the Progress Pride flag and placard was permissible,” Maltinsky’s complaint said, adding: ”The Chief Division Counsel advised Maltinsky that the display of the flag and placard did not violate any policy, rule, or regulation.”Nevertheless, on 1 October, Maltinsky was notified of his termination.In a letter cited in Maltinsky’s complaint, Patel wrote: “I have determined that you exercised poor judgment with an inappropriate display of political signage in your work area during your previous assignment at the Los Angeles Field Office. Pursuant to Article II of the United States Constitution and the laws of the United States, your employment with the Federal Bureau of Investigation is hereby terminated.”In a statement released on Wednesday, Maltinsky’s lawyer Kerrie Riggs said: “This administration’s unlawfully firing him is part of a larger campaign to rid federal agencies of employees who may have different viewpoints, or are from marginalized groups, or who dare speak out against discrimination. David’s fight is not just about him, but about securing the rights and freedoms of all federal employees.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe FBI declined to comment on the lawsuit. The Guardian has also reached out to the justice department.Maltinsky’s lawsuit follows another one filed in September by three former senior FBI officials who said they were wrongfully terminated, alleging that Patel said he had been directed by the White House to fire any agent involved in an investigation into Trump.Meanwhile, the FBI fired a nearly three-decade veteran earlier this month after Patel reportedly became furious by reports that the FBI director had taken a government jet to attend a wrestling event where his girlfriend performed the national anthem.Steven Palmer, a bureau veteran since 1998, was removed as head of the FBI’s critical incident response group, which manages major security threats and the agency’s jet fleet. More

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      FBI fires top official amid Kash Patel’s outrage over reports of agency jet use

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      A top FBI official with 27 years standing has reportedly been fired by the bureau after its director, Kash Patel, became enraged by press stories revealing he had used a government jet to travel to see his girlfriend sing the national anthem at a wrestling match.Steven Palmer, who had worked at the bureau since 1998, was fired as head of the FBI’s critical incident response group which is responsible for handling major security threats as well as overseeing the agency’s fleet of jets. He was the third head of the unit to be dismissed since Patel became the second Trump administration’s FBI director in February.Bloomberg Law, which broke the story, said that three unnamed sources had expressed astonishment at the sacking given that Patel’s flight schedules were fully public and trackable on websites. A day after her performance, Patel himself had reposted photos showing him together with his girlfriend, country singer Alexis Wilkins, on his X account.According to Bloomberg, Patel had become furious over stories published after the event about his use of the FBI jet to go on the date with Wilkins. Soon after, Palmer had been told he could resign instantly or be fired.The dismissal was made official on Friday.Flight logs publicly trackable on Flight Aware for Patel’s plane, N708JH, show that the jet landed at an airport near Penn State on 25 October. That evening Wilkins performed at a Real American Freestyle wrestling event, and the flight logs show Patel’s FBI plane later flying to Nashville.Records for the movements of the jet N708JH were blocked on Flight Aware as of Sunday. A search for the government jet generates a message saying that it is “not available for public tracking per request from the owner/operator”.On Sunday, Patel posted a lengthy statement on his X account in which he said he refused to be “distracted by baseless rumors or the noise from uninformed internet anarchists and the fake news”. He said it was a “disgrace” to go after “people doing great work, my personal life, or those around me”, reserving his harshest words for what he called the “disgustingly baseless attacks against Alexis – a true patriot and the woman I’m proud to call my partner in life”.He also fueled further speculation by attacking “our supposed allies” whom he lambasted for “staying silent”, though he did not name names. “Your silence is louder than the clickbait haters,” he said.In an earlier statement his spokesperson, Ben Williamson, pointed out that the FBI director is required under government rules to pay some reimbursement for his private jet travel and claimed Patel had “significantly limited” personal trips compared with his predecessors Chris Wray and James Comey. “He’s allowed to take personal time on occasion to see family, friends or his longtime girlfriend,” the spokesman said.As the Daily Beast has noted, Patel was highly critical of Wray’s use of government jets for personal use when Wray was director of the bureau. In 2023, Patel scathingly dubbed Wray “#GovernmentGangster” and accused him of “jetting off on out (sic) tax payer dollars while dodging accountability for the implosion of the FBI on his watch”.Palmer’s dismissal makes him the third head of the FBI critical incident response group to be ditched under Patel. Wes Wheeler was fired in March, and Brian Driscoll in August.Driscoll is now suing the Trump administration for unfair dismissal claiming he was targeted for showing lack of loyalty to the president.Patel’s travel on a government jet for a date night was first spotted by Kyle Seraphin, a former FBI agent who has become a thorn in the side of the Trump administration. His podcast is caustically critical of the current leadership of the FBI.“We’re in the middle of government shutdown … and this guy is jetting off to hang out with his girlfriend in Nashville on our dime?” Seraphin said in a recent podcast.The government shutdown to which Seraphin alluded had entered its 32nd day.In a separate unflattering development for him, Patel is facing heat from a defense lawyer in Michigan who is objecting to the FBI director’s allegations Friday that five young men had been arrested as they planned a Halloween terror attack. The lawyer, Amir Makled, who represents one of the five individuals, said that having reviewed the case he was convinced no such terror event had been in the pipeline.Makled told Associated Press that the FBI director’s claims were “hysteria and fearmongering”. The five men were aged 16 to 20 – and were US citizens and gamers.“I don’t believe that there’s anything illegal about any of the activity they were doing,” he said. More

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      Donald Trump has built a regime of retribution and reward | Sidney Blumenthal

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      Donald Trump’s voracious desire for retribution has quickly evolved into a regular and predictable system. In the year since his election, the president’s rage and whims have assumed the form of policies in the same way that Joseph Stalin’s purges could be called policies. Figures within the federal system of justice who do not do his bidding are summarily fired and replaced by loyalists. Leaders who have called him to account or are in his way may face indictment, trial and punishment. Opponents have been designated under Presidential National Security Memorandum No 7 as “Antifa”: “anti-American”, “anti-Christian” and “anti-capitalist”, and threatened with prosecution as a “terrorist”. Meanwhile, many aligned with him escape justice, whether through the hand of the Department of Justice (DoJ) or the presidential pardon power. Now, he demands compensation for having been prosecuted to the tune of $230m from the DoJ budget.Each of the cases involving prosecution of Trump’s enemies and, on the other hand, the leniency extended to his allies has its own peculiarities of outrage. But whatever their unique and arbitrary perversities, they are expressions of what has emerged as a technique. These episodes are not isolated or coincidental. Trump’s purge of DoJ prosecutors and FBI agents, accompanied by his installment of flunkies in senior positions, started in a rush and quickly assumed a pattern, but has now been molded into a regime. The justice department and the FBI have been remade into political agencies under Trump’s explicit command to carry out his wishes. Injustice is made routine. It is the retribution system.The origin of this system has been exposed in the complaint of three former senior FBI officials filed on 10 September in the US district court in DC against the FBI director, Kash Patel, and the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, for illegal termination in “a campaign of retribution against Plaintiffs for what Defendants deemed to be a failure to demonstrate sufficient political loyalty”. In the complaint, Brian Driscoll, the former acting FBI director, describes a conversation in which Patel “openly acknowledged the unlawfulness of his actions”.Driscoll had tried to shield FBI agents from being fired, the complaint alleges. Patel told him that “they” – understood by Driscoll to be the White House and justice department – had directed him to fire anyone whom they identified as having worked on a criminal investigation against Trump. The complaint continues: “Patel explained that he had to fire the people his superiors told him to fire, because his ability to keep his own job depended on the removal of the agents who worked on cases involving the President. Patel explained that there was nothing he or Driscoll could do to stop these or any other firings, because ‘the FBI tried to put the President in jail and he hasn’t forgotten it.’” When Driscoll told Patel he was violating the FBI’s own internal rules, Patel allegedly said “he understood that and he knew the nature of the summary firings were likely illegal”.Since Patel’s alleged admission to Driscoll, the DoJ and the FBI have been gutted and repurposed for Trump’s retribution system. Six of the FBI’s senior executives were fired or forced out in the early weeks of the administration. About 4,500 professional attorneys at the DoJ have accepted a “deferred resignation program”. At least seven federal prosecutors, including those in the southern district of New York, resigned in protest over what they viewed as political interference in dropping the corruption case against the New York City mayor, Eric Adams, in exchange for his cooperation with Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement roundups of immigrants. The public integrity section of the DoJ, which handles corruption cases, has been reduced to two attorneys. The civil rights division has been decimated: 70% of its staff has left. One-third of senior leaders at the DoJ have quit. The section enforcing environmental law has lost half its leadership.In the Adams case, the acting US attorney for the southern district of New York, Danielle Sassoon, resigned in protest against what she described as “quid pro quo”. Tom Homan, Trump’s “border czar”, appeared as the enforcer with Adams on Fox News to declare: “If he doesn’t come through, I’ll be back in New York City.” And Emil Bove, previously the acting deputy attorney general and a former Trump attorney, who arranged the deal, was awarded an appellate federal judgeship, a potential stepping stone to the supreme court.Trump’s immunity for crimes committed while in office, granted by the extraordinary ruling of the Republican majority on the supreme court, thus thwarting his prosecution over the January 6 insurrection and preserving his political viability for the 2024 election, is the foundation stone on which he stands to protect his stalwarts. With such immunity, he has been freed to authorize corruption. The effect of the supreme court decision permeates his administration and the Republican party down to its bones. Trump v United States has metastasized. As Richard Nixon’s White House counsel John Dean said about the Watergate scandal, it has become “a cancer on the presidency”.The understanding that nobody significant who is working for or supporting Trump can ever expect to face the bar of justice for criminal behavior has been absorbed as an operating principle. In his service, they are released from following the rule of law in favor of obedience to the rule of the leader. As Trump stated in granting a commutation to former Republican congressman George Santos, convicted of stealing of Covid unemployment insurance benefits, credit card fraud, embezzlement of election funds and identity theft, among other crimes, “at least Santos had the Courage, Conviction, and Intelligence to ALWAYS VOTE REPUBLICAN!” Santos is now able to attend the Kennedy Center Honors, when disco queen Gloria Gaynor is bestowed her award and belts I Will Survive – apparently one of his favorites.In his inside-out world, Santos the con is transformed into Trump’s projection of himself as a victim. Santos is washed clean; he is resurrected. The Santos commutation, after serving 84 days of an 87-month sentence, was a minor masterstroke for Trump to demonstrate even more than contempt for the law and his exultation of stupidity. Santos was not just the class clown of the House Republican conference. The fake descendant of Holocaust survivors, phony Goldman Sachs banker, bogus real estate tycoon, but real Brazilian drag queen, was an albatross for congressional Republicans. Trump’s commutation is another one of his gestures to demonstrate that House Republicans will swallow any embarrassment and insult with servility.Santos’s commutation represents the obverse but essential element of the retribution system – the rewards system. The favors began on his inauguration day, when Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of more than 1,500 people involved in the January 6 assault on the US Capitol, followed by pardons for 23 anti-abortion activists convicted under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, 16 politicians as of June (including those from his first term), financial fraudsters and closely connected donors. One of the January 6 pardoned prisoners, Christopher Moynihan, was arrested on 20 October for attempted murder of the House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries. More than 10 of the January 6 insurrectionists pardoned by Trump have been rearrested, charged or sentenced on a variety of charges, including child sexual assault and plotting to kill FBI agents.Homan, the “border czar”, has no need for a pardon or commutation. He was exempted from prosecution by Trump’s justice department after having reportedly been taped in a sting operation by FBI agents in September 2024 accepting $50,000 in cash in a Cava bag in exchange for promising to deliver federal contracts once he assumed his position under Trump.Homan has offered a series of conflicting explanations about the money. On Fox News, he insisted he did “nothing criminal”, a non-denial denial. The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, offered a different explanation, announcing that Homan had never taken the cash. When the Rhode Island senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat on the Senate judiciary committee, asked Bondi on 7 October, “what became of the $50,000?”, she did not answer, but spewed a falsehood that Whitehouse had taken a campaign donation from someone who had held meetings with Jeffrey Epstein. Apparently taking the cue, Homan went on the rightwing NewsNation to say: “I didn’t take $50,000 from anybody.” In short, he has claimed he has not done anything illegal in not doing it. If he were to write about it, Homan might borrow the title from OJ Simpson’s If I Did It.Trump’s pardons and grants of clemency often bypass the traditional review process of the pardon attorney at the justice department, even though he has replaced the professional Liz Oyer with the crackpot Ed Martin, who was an organizer of Stop the Steal rallies and attorney for January 6 defendants. As the acting US attorney for the District of Columbia, Martin led the purge of DoJ prosecutors of January 6 insurrectionists. But Martin’s tenure was abbreviated when it was clear his confirmation to hold the job permanently would be rejected by the Senate. Trump sent him to DoJ, where he is also the head of the new “weaponization working group”. Martin has overseen the cellophane-thin indictment of the Federal Reserve Board governor Lisa Cook for alleged mortgage fraud, which she denies. Trump has fired her, but the supreme court has allowed her to stay in her job until it hears the arguments in the case in January 2026.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump’s scheme of indicting “enemies within” on contrived mortgage application fraud charges extends to the New York attorney general, Letitia James, who successfully prosecuted Trump for financial fraud, and targeting the California Democratic senator Adam Schiff, who led Trump’s first impeachment. Trump has enlisted for this particular retribution campaign the enthusiastically thuggish Bill Pulte, like Trump another unworthy entitled heir, grandson to the billionaire founder of a home building empire, to dredge up the thin gruel to make the accusations. Pulte has a history of making belligerent insults, even to a family member who filed a lawsuit against him to stop his “degrading and threatening harassment”. In early September, at the new exclusive private club in Washington for Trump people, the Executive Branch, the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, confronted Pulte for “trash-talking him” to Trump. “I’m going to punch you in your fucking face,” Bessent said, according to the New York Post. Yet Trump still apparently values Pulte for his utility as one of his loudmouth bullies.Martin peeked into the James case with a letter to her attorney Abbe Lowell on 12 August asking for her to resign as “an act of good faith”, adding that his letter was “confidential”. Lowell replied that given the letter’s obvious violation of the code of “professional responsibility” for justice department attorneys, “I was not sure it was actually from you.” Lowell also noted that Martin had staged a strange “photo opportunity”, standing in front of James’s brownstone in Brooklyn accompanied by a photographer from the New York Post, “outside the bounds of DoJ and ethics rules”. Even more bizarrely, Martin wore a trenchcoat, perhaps in homage to the character of Columbo, a fictional detective made famous in a TV series of the 1970s but earlier played by the actor Thomas Mitchell, Martin’s uncle. “One has no conceivable idea of any proper or legitimate reason you went to Ms James’ house, what you were doing, and for what actual purpose,” wrote Lowell.When Trump demanded the indictment of the former FBI director James Comey, his recent appointee as the US attorney in the eastern district of Virginia, Erik Siebert, refused on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence for the allegation. He was promptly replaced by Lindsey Halligan, a former beauty contestant and insurance lawyer from Florida, who had assisted in Trump’s documents case at Mar-a-Lago, and had been elevated to a senior associate staff secretary in his White House. Six top attorneys in the eastern district’s office either resigned in protest or were fired. One of the longtime professional prosecutors who was fired, Michael Ben’Ary, taped a letter to the door, stating: “Leadership is more concerned with punishing the President’s perceived enemies than they are with protecting our national security.”Comey’s daughter, Maurene Comey, an assistant US attorney in the southern district of New York, was fired in July. She filed a lawsuit claiming her “politically motivated termination” was “unlawful and unconstitutional” and solely the result of her relationship to her father. Perhaps coincidentally, she was the prosecutor in the cases of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.Just when James Comey filed a motion for the judge to dismiss the case against him as a vindictive prosecution, a reporter at Lawfare, Anna Bower, revealed that Halligan had initiated text messages on Signal petulantly complaining to her about her stories on the Letitia James case and demanding corrections. In fact, Bower had only tweeted a New York Times article that cast doubt on the central contention of the prosecution that James used a second home as a rental property. Halligan demanded changes in the article that Bower did not write, but Halligan claimed she couldn’t discuss them because of grand jury secrecy, which she broadly hinted at. Then, when Bower informed her she would publish their exchange, Halligan belatedly insisted it was off the record. She noted that she erased her messages on Signal on a regular basis, which violates the Federal Records Act. In the world of yesterday, Halligan would have been instantly removed and under investigation from both the DoJ and congressional committees. A DoJ spokesperson responded to Bower with the department’s official statement: “Good luck ever getting anyone to talk to you when you publish their texts.”The sheer amateurishness of Halligan may make Trump’s system appear unprecedented, which it is certainly in American history. Nixon at his worst only aspired to what Trump is putting into practice. But aspects of it have had their parallels in the purges that were characteristic of authoritarian regimes of the past. “In other words, this system is the logical outgrowth of the Leader principle in its full implication and the best possible guarantee for loyalty,” wrote Hannah Arendt in The Origins of Totalitarianism.The cranks, incompetents and ambitious losers recruited to carry out Trump’s vengeance invariably display a spectrum of quirks. His preference would be that they would all be a chorus line of former beauty queens. “It’s that face. It’s those lips. They move like a machine gun,” Trump has mused about his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt. Whoever the Trump misfit might be, beauties or Ed Martin, they are replaceable widgets that function within the system he has created. Trump wages war on the “enemies within” with the eccentrics at his disposal. They represent the revenge of the second-rate or less, taking positions once held by the most qualified and then wreaking havoc on their meritorious betters in a wave of resentment. They reflect their damaged leader. That is the beating heart of Trumpism.

      Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth. He is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Comey asks judge to dismiss criminal charges claiming selective prosecution

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      Former FBI director James Comey formally asked a federal judge to dismiss criminal charges against him, arguing he was the victim of a selective prosecution and that the US attorney who filed the charges was unlawfully appointed.“The record as it currently exists shows a clear causal link between President Trump’s animus and the prosecution of Mr Comey,” Comey’s lawyers wrote in their request to dismiss the case, calling a 20 September Truth Social post in which he disparaged Comey and called for his prosecution “smoking gun evidence”. “President Trump’s repeated public statements and action leave no doubt as to the government’s genuine animus toward Mr Comey.” Comey’s lawyers attached an exhibit to their filing on Monday, which contains dozens of public statements from Trump criticizing Comey.Comey was indicted on 25 September with one count of making a false statement and one count of obstructing a congressional proceeding. The charges are related to Comey’s 30 September 2020 testimony before Congress, and are connected to Comey’s assertion he had never authorized anyone at the FBI to leak information. The precise details of the offense have not been made public and Comey has pleaded not guilty and forcefully denied any wrongdoing.The charges were filed against Comey, though career prosecutors in the justice department determined charges were not warranted. Trump forced out Erik Siebert, the US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, in September and installed Lindsey Halligan, a White House aide. The Comey charges were filed days later.“In the ordinary case, a prosecutor’s charging decision is presumptively lawful and rests within her broad discretion. This is no ordinary case,” Comey’s lawyers wrote. “Here, direct evidence establishes that the President harbors genuine animus toward Mr. Comey, including because of Mr. Comey’s protected speech, that he installed his personal attorney as a ‘stalking horse’ to carry out his bidding; and that she then prosecuted Mr. Comey—days before the statute of limitations expired, with a faulty indictment—to effectuate the President’s wishes.”Comey’s Monday filing says that the fact that career prosecutors did not believe there was enough evidence to bring a case bolsters his argument that he was selectively prosecuted. They also argue that the indictment mischaracterizes the question Comey was asked that prompted the answer prosecutors say was a lie and the basis of his criminal false statement.According to the indictment, Comey was asked by a US senator whether he “had not ‘authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports’ regarding an FBI investigation concerning PERSON 1”. (Comey’s lawyers wrote in their filing on Monday that Person 1 was Hillary Clinton.)The accusation relates to a question from Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. During the 2020 hearing, Cruz noted that in 2017 congressional testimony, Comey denied “ever authoriz[ing] someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports about the Trump investigation or the Clinton Administration”. Cruz went on to note that Andrew McCabe, the former deputy director of the FBI, had said Comey authorized him to leak information to the Wall Street Journal.In response, Comey said he stood by his prior testimony. Comey’s lawyers argued on Monday the indictment was defective because Cruz’s question had been focused on McCabe, but the government informed them that the person Comey is alleged to have authorized to leak to the media is Daniel Richman, a friend of Comey’s and professor at Columbia University.“The indictment omits Senator Cruz’s words that explicitly narrow the focus of his questions to Mr. McCabe and misleadingly implies that the questioning related to Mr. Richman. In fact, Mr. Comey’s September 2020 exchange with Senator Cruz made no reference whatsoever to Mr. Richman, who ultimately appears in the indictment,” they wrote. They also note that Cruz asked about the “Clinton administration” and not “Hillary Clinton”.Career prosecutors interviewed Richman as part of their investigation into Comey and found him not helpful to making a case, according to the New York Times. John Durham, a special counsel appointed to investigate the FBI’s inquiry into Russian meddling, also told investigators he did not uncover evidence to support charges against Comey.Comey’s lawyers also argued on Monday that the case should be dismissed because Halligan was not lawfully appointed.“The United States cannot charge, maintain, and prosecute a case through an official who has no entitlement to exercise governmental authority,” they wrote.US attorneys must be confirmed by the Senate and can only serve for 120 days on an interim basis unless their appointment is extended by the judges overseeing their district. Siebert, Halligan’s predecessor, served for the 120-day limit and Halligan does not appear to have met other exceptions that would allow her to continue to serve.“The period does not start anew once the 120-day period expires or if a substitute interim U.S. Attorney is appointed before the 120-day period expires,” Comey’s attorneys wrote.Halligan has also overseen criminal fraud charges against New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, in connection to allegations she lied on mortgage documents. James has said she is not guilty. Legal experts have said that case does not appear to be strong. More

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      Former Trump adviser John Bolton indicted by justice department

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      A federal grand jury has indicted John Bolton, the former national security adviser in Donald Trump’s first term, on charges of mishandling and transmitting classified information.The indictment, filed in Maryland, appears to ultimately have been signed off on from career prosecutors in the US attorney’s office there despite initial reluctance to bring a case before the end of the year.The 18-count indictment against Bolton involves eight counts of unlawfully transmitting national defense information and 10 counts of retaining classified information under the Espionage Act, according to the 26-page indictment.The charges nonetheless come at a fraught moment for the justice department, which has been rocked by extraordinary pressure from Trump to expand a vendetta campaign to pursue criminal cases against his political enemies.In recent weeks, Lindsey Halligan, Trump’s handpicked US attorney in Virginia, obtained indictments against James Comey, the former FBI director, and the New York state attorney general, Letitia James, over the objections of career prosecutors.Bolton has been a thorn in Trump’s side for years since he departed the president’s first administration, criticizing him on cable news and assailing him for his own mishandling of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago club.Part of the criminal investigation into Bolton has focused on what resembled diary entries and private notes he made for himself on an AOL email account – and whether they contained classified information, according to people familiar with the matter.Bolton’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, has said the former national security adviser did nothing inappropriate with classified records. and documents with classified markings retrieved from his phone by the FBI were decades old.Bolton, a longtime federal government official with a top secret clearance who was UN ambassador before serving as Trump’s national security adviser from 2018 to 2019, is widely known as a diligent note-taker.After he left the administration in Trump’s first term, Bolton continued to work in Washington and the investigation has examined whether his assistants had access to those notes, the people said.Bolton’s AOL email account was also hacked by a foreign adversary, according to a redacted US intelligence assessment that was included in the search warrant affidavit from the search of Bolton’s house.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe potential for disclosures of classified information are relevant in Espionage Act cases, because the justice department looks at so-called “aggregating factors” when deciding whether to mount such a prosecution.Broadly, the department pursues cases that have a combination of four factors: willful mishandling of classified information, vast quantities of classified information to support an inference of misconduct, disloyalty to the US and obstruction. More

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      Nearly half of FBI agents in major offices reassigned to immigration enforcement

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      Nearly half of the FBI agents working in the US’s major field offices have been reassigned to aid immigration enforcement, according to newly released data, a stunning shift in law enforcement priorities that has raised public safety concerns.Personnel data obtained by Mark Warner, a Democratic senator, and shared with the Guardian, suggests the Trump administration has moved 45% of FBI agents in the country’s 25 largest field offices to support the Department of Homeland Security’s immigration crackdown. Across all of the FBI’s offices, 23% of the roughly 13,000 total agents at the bureau are now working on immigration, according to Warner, the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee.Warner’s office said the FBI agents now deployed alongside Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agent have been taken away from their work tackling cybercrimes, drug trafficking, terrorism, espionage, violent crimes, counterintelligence and other efforts that are part of the bureau’s mission – some areas that Trump has claimed are White House priorities.The data, first reported by the Washington Post, suggests the FBI is dramatically shifting its objectives in an effort to back Trump’s increasingly aggressive immigration raids, with the administration targeting 3,000 daily arrests and seeking to expand its detention capacity to detain more than 100,000 immigrants.The data is understating the scale of the reorganization, as the FBI only provided counts for agents who are now spending more than half of their job doing immigration enforcement, according to Warner. The senator’s office said it was likely that more than a quarter of FBI agents’ total hours were now dedicated to immigration, and that in some field offices, more than half of the agents had been redirected to DHS.“When you pull a quarter of the FBI’s top agents off the front lines of fighting terrorists, spies, drug traffickers, and violent criminals, the consequences are clear: critical national security work gets sidelined, and our country is put at greater risk,” Warner said in a statement.The transformation of the FBI has raised alarms about the potential consequences for communities targeted by immigration raids and the impact on the work the bureau is abandoning, experts said.Mike German, a former FBI agent and civil liberties advocate, said it was unprecedented for the bureau to redirect this many agents to a mission that is not part of the FBI’s mandate. Some agents might be eager to support the president’s immigration agenda while others likely oppose the redirection, he said: “Part of the reason FBI leadership would be doing this at such scale is to separate those two – to identify who are the loyalists and who are potential impediments to the administration’s goals.”The move is in line with FBI director Kash Patel’s efforts to purge the bureau of agents seen as disloyal to Trump, German said, noting reports of the termination of personnel involved in the January 6 investigation.FBI agents, he said, are generally trained as investigators who may make targeted arrests, a job that significantly differs from those of many immigration enforcement officers, which could lead to problems in the field during immigration raids. “Just jumping in an SUV with a bunch of armed men and rolling around the streets until you see someone running away is inherently a more dangerous type of activity they are not very well trained for,” German said.There has been extensive documentation of the violent and indiscriminate nature of the Ice raids, which have often been carried out by masked men and have at times led to the detention of US citizens, and adding FBI personnel to the mix could exacerbate the chaos and potential for abuses, the former agent said.The exact tasks and responsibilities of the FBI agents now working alongside Ice are unclear. Spokespeople for DHS, Ice, the FBI and the Department of Justice did not respond to requests for comment on Thursday.German, an FBI whistleblower who has spoken out about the civil rights abuses of the bureau’s intelligence work, said he was most concerned about the agency shifting away from public corruption and white-collar crime, offenses state and local agencies don’t have capacity to tackle: “That’s where the real harm will come.”Current and former FBI agents told the Washington Post there were growing concerns about low morale within the agency and that agents were stretched thin, which could hamper national security investigations and complex cases.Kenneth Gray, a former FBI agent and professor of practice in the University of New Haven’s criminal justice department, said the shift in priorities resembled the post-9/11 reorganization at the FBI, when counterterrorism became the central focus.“The bureau can withstand a temporary change in its priorities, but in the long-term, if agents are continuing to work immigration matters, as opposed to counterterrorism, foreign counterintelligence or cybercrimes, that may end up biting us big time,” said Gray, who worked at the bureau for 24 years, before leaving in 2012. “The next 9/11 might happen if agents who were working on counterterrorism have been diverted.”Gray, however, said he was not concerned about a temporary shift while DHS engages in rapid recruitment of new Ice officers.The US attorney general, Pam Bondi, defended the redirection of FBI resources toward immigration enforcement at a tense Senate hearing earlier this week when she was accused by Democrats of weaponizing the justice department. FBI agents, she said, were working daily with DHS on “keeping Americans safe and getting illegal aliens out of our country”. More

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      FBI cuts ties with two advocacy groups that track US extremism after rightwing backlash

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      Kash Patel, the FBI director, says the agency is cutting ties with two organizations that for decades have tracked domestic extremism and racial and religious bias, a move that follows complaints about the groups from some conservatives and prominent allies of president Donald Trump.Patel said on Friday that the FBI would sever its relationship with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), asserting that the organization had been turned into a “partisan smear machine” and criticizing it for its use of a “hate map” that documents alleged anti-government and hate groups inside the US. A statement earlier in the week from Patel said the FBI would end ties with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a prominent Jewish advocacy organization that fights antisemitism.The announcements amount to a dramatic rethinking of longstanding FBI partnerships with prominent civil rights groups at a time when Patel is moving rapidly to reshape the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency. The organizations over the years have provided research on hate crime and domestic extremism, law enforcement training and other services – but have also been criticized by some conservatives for what they say is an unfair maligning of their viewpoints.That criticism escalated after the 10 September assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk amid renewed attention to the SPLC’s characterization of the group, Turning Point USA, that Kirk founded. For instance, the SPLC included a section on Turning Point in a report titled “The Year in Hate and Extremism 2024” that described the group as a “case study in the hard right”. Prominent figures including Elon Musk lambasted the SPLC in recent days about its descriptions of Kirk and the organization.A spokesperson for the SPLC, a legal and advocacy group founded in 1971 as a watchdog for minorities and the underprivileged, did not directly address Patel’s comments in a statement Friday but said the organization has for decades shared data with the public and remains “committed to exposing hate and extremism as we work to equip communities with knowledge and defend the rights and safety of marginalized people”.The ADL has also faced criticism on the right for maintaining a “Glossary of Extremism”. The organization announced recently that it was discontinuing that glossary because a number of entries were outdated and some were being “intentionally misrepresented and misused”.Founded in 1913 to confront antisemitism, the ADL has long worked closely with the FBI – not only through research and training but also through awards ceremonies that recognize law enforcement officials involved in investigations into racially or religiously motivated extremism.James Comey, the former FBI director, paid tribute to that relationship in May 2017 when he said at an ADL event: “For more than 100 years, you have advocated and fought for fairness and equality, for inclusion and acceptance. You never were indifferent or complacent.”A Patel antagonist, Comey was indicted on 25 September on false statement and obstruction charges and has said he is innocent. Patel appeared to mock Comey’s comments in a post Wednesday on X in which he shared a Fox News story that quoted him as having cut ties with the ADL.“James Comey wrote ‘love letters’ to the ADL and embedded FBI agents with them – a group that ran disgraceful ops spying on Americans,” he said in a post made as Jews were preparing to begin observing Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar. “That era is OVER. This FBI won’t partner with political fronts masquerading as watchdogs.”An ADL spokesperson did not immediately comment Friday on Patel’s announcement. But CEO and executive director Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement Friday that the ADL “has deep respect” for the FBI.“In light of an unprecedented surge of antisemitism, we remain more committed than ever to our core purpose to protect the Jewish people,” Greenblatt said. More

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      FBI fires agents who kneeled during 2020 racial justice protest

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      The FBI has fired agents who were photographed kneeling during a racial justice protest in Washington DC that followed the 2020 murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers, three people familiar with the matter told the Associated Press on Friday.The bureau last spring had reassigned the agents but has since fired them, said the people, who insisted on anonymity to discuss personnel matters with the AP.The number of FBI employees terminated was not immediately clear, but two people said it was roughly 20.The photographs at issue showed a group of agents taking the knee during one of the demonstrations following the May 2020 killing of Floyd, a death that led to a national reckoning over policing and racial injustice and sparked widespread anger after millions of people saw video of the arrest. The kneeling had angered some in the FBI but was also understood as a possible de-escalation tactic during a period of protests.The FBI Agents Association confirmed in a statement late on Friday that more than a dozen agents had been fired, including military veterans with additional statutory protections, and condemned the move as unlawful. It called on Congress to investigate and said the firings were another indication of the FBI director Kash Patel’s disregard for the legal rights of bureau employees.“As Director Patel has repeatedly stated, nobody is above the law,” the agents association said. “But rather than providing these agents with fair treatment and due process, Patel chose to again violate the law by ignoring these agents’ constitutional and legal rights instead of following the requisite process.”An FBI spokesperson declined to comment on Friday.The firings come amid a broader personnel purge at the bureau as Patel works to reshape the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency.Five agents and top-level executives were known to have been summarily fired in August in a wave of ousters that current and former officials say has contributed to declining morale.One of those, Steve Jensen, helped oversee investigations into the attack on the US Capitol that Donald Trump supporters carried out on 6 January 2021 after his first presidency ended in defeat to Joe Biden. Another, Brian Driscoll, served as acting FBI director in the early days of Trump’s second presidency, which began in January, and resisted US justice department demands to supply the names of agents who investigated the Capitol attack.A third, Chris Meyer, was incorrectly rumored on social media to have participated in the investigation into Trump’s retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. A fourth, Walter Giardina, participated in high-profile investigations like the one into Trump adviser Peter Navarro.A lawsuit filed by Jensen, Driscoll and another fired FBI supervisor, Spencer Evans, alleged that Patel communicated that he understood that it was “likely illegal” to fire agents based on cases they worked but was powerless to stop it because the White House and the justice department were determined to remove all agents who investigated Trump.Patel denied at a recent congressional hearing that he took orders from the White House on whom to fire and said anyone who had been dismissed failed to meet the FBI’s standards. More