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    James Comey’s real ‘crime’? Daring to put the law before loyalty to Trump | Lawrence Douglas

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    In 1931, an exceptionally talented young Berlin attorney named Hans Litten summoned Adolf Hitler to testify in a criminal case. Litten represented four victims of a brutal assault perpetrated by members of Hitler’s Sturmabteilung, or SA, on a dance hall frequented by leftist workers; by the time the assault ended, three people were dead. At trial, the defense sought to portray the SA as a disciplined political organization, under orders from Hitler to use force only as self-defense.In his three-hour cross-examination of the head of the Nazi party, Litten managed what precious few dared to attempt. Hitler had expected the young lawyer to be intimidated; instead, Litten aggressively and skillfully dissected him under oath, reducing the supposedly gifted orator to a stammering rage. In trapping Hitler in contradictions and exposing him as an inveterate liar, Litten also made clear the Nazis’ goal of destroying the Weimar Republic. Hitler left the witness stand rattled and humiliated, henceforth forbidding Litten’s name to be uttered in his presence.Hitler’s revenge came two years later, barely a month after he had been installed in power. In the wake of the Reichstag fire – an arson attack on the parliament building – and relying on a hastily drafted emergency decree for the “protection of people and state”, Hitler ordered the arrest and “protective custody” of numerous perceived political enemies, including Litten. Over the next five years, as he was shuttled from concentration camp to concentration camp, Litten was repeatedly beaten and tortured. In 1938, with no prospect of release, he took his own life. His crime: trying to protect the role of law and a constitutional democracy from a would-be authoritarian.The United States in 2025 is not Germany in 1933. That said, Litten’s experience has a disturbingly familiar ring. Last week, the US attorney’s office for the eastern district of Virginia (EDVA) announced that the former FBI director James Comey had been indicted for allegedly lying under oath to a congressional committee. The case against Comey is so flimsy that Erik Siebert, Trump’s hand-picked chief federal prosecutor for the post, balked at filing charges. Siebert’s fair assessment predictably earned him the ire of the president. “I want him out,” Trump fumed, and so Siebert resigned before he could be fired, vacating the position he had occupied for barely eight months.Trump hastily named a replacement: Lindsey Halligan, a member of Trump’s coterie of personal lawyers who now occupy some of the most pivotal positions within the Department of Justice. Never mind that Halligan has no prior prosecutorial experience and that the head of the EDVA oversees the prosecution of many of the nation’s most complicated and sensitive cases involving national security and financial crimes; Halligan’s great qualification was apparently her willingness to do what Siebert would not: indulge Trump’s hankering for revenge. Her indictment of Comey, handed down scant days before the five-year statute of limitations on the alleged crimes was to expire, only confirmed Siebert’s doubts. Law students invariably learn the old canard that any decent prosecutor can get a grand jury “to indict a ham sandwich” – but maybe not Halligan: the grand jury refused to indict on one of the three counts that the prosecutor submitted.Trump greeted the news of the two-count indictment by crowing on Truth Social: “JUSTICE IN AMERICA!” – which might be an apt, if inadvertently Orwellian, description of the present state of the rule of law in our nation. The case is certainly about score-settling, but it’s also far more disturbing than that. Let’s assume for the moment that Trump was unfairly targeted for investigation during his first term; it would still be unseemly for a sitting president to respond to one injustice with another. But the fact is that the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election – the source of Trump’s crusade against Comey – was not a politically motivated “witch-hunt” (Trump’s favorite go-to term of impugnment to discredit attempts to hold him to account). Instead, it revealed a “sweeping and systematic” campaign to interfere with the 2016 election.Comey’s true “crime” recalls Hans Litten’s. He dared to show fidelity to his office and to the law, and not to the Great Leader. This is not to say that Comey risks sharing the fate of the intrepid German lawyer. In publicly declaring Comey “guilty as hell” and in transparently interfering in the legal process, Trump has handed the judge a reason to simply dismiss the case as an exercise in vindictive prosecution. Should Comey go to trial, the case’s obvious weaknesses might well result in an acquittal. And even if Comey were to be convicted and sent to prison, the US does not, at present, operate a system of concentration camps where political opponents face systematic torture.But that is cold comfort. The fact remains that Comey is being persecuted, not prosecuted, for putting service to the nation above obedience to a man. As if following a script from the authoritarian playbook, Trump is making Comey pay for his act of constitutional fidelity. What should disturb all Americans is the ease with which Trump, aided by his craven and opportunistic legal lackeys, has turned the proudly independent justice department into a tool of authoritarian consolidation.

    Lawrence Douglas teaches at Amherst College. His newest book, The Criminal State: War, Atrocity, and the Dream of International Justice, will be published in the spring of 2026 More

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      Ex-Trump lawyer says president using Comey indictment to conceal being ‘criminal’

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      The indictment of former FBI director James Comey is part of a concerted effort by Donald Trump to “rewrite history” in his favor, a former senior White House lawyer claimed on Sunday as he warned of more retribution to come for the president’s political opponents.Ty Cobb, who defended Trump’s first administration during the Mueller investigation into his 2016 campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia, also told CBS that he doubted Comey would be convicted, if the case ever reached trial.Trump’s moves, he said on the Sunday morning show Face the Nation, were “wholly unconstitutional [and] authoritarian” and an attempt to hoodwink future generations.“Trump wants to rewrite history so that the next generation may not know that he incited a violent insurrection, refused to peacefully transfer the power of the presidency after losing an election, stole classified documents and showed them to friends and guests at Mar-a-Lago, and that he was a criminal,” Cobb said.“He’s a convicted felon. All, anybody involved in those events that offended him, they’re in real danger.”Cobb, a distant relative of the baseball legend with the same name, has become a vocal Trump critic since serving as his liaison to special counsel Robert Mueller, and said his role as lawyer for the administration, not as a personal attorney to the president, allowed him to call “balls and strikes” now.He laid out why he thought the indictment against Comey, for allegedly lying to Congress, was fatally flawed; and assailed Trump’s appointment of a White House aide with no prosecutorial experience to pursue the case, after he fired a federal prosecutor, Erik Siebert, when he declined to bring charges.“So, you have the rewriting history stuff. The US attorney that he appointed, his personal lawyer Lindsey Halligan, her role previously in the administration was, you know, trying to eliminate the theory that, you know, America had slaves, at the Smithsonian,” he said.“She was there to whitewash the Smithsonian and paint America as something that it isn’t. America needs to learn from the mistakes and lessons that we’ve had, and one of the biggest mistakes that America ever had was re-electing President Trump.”Cobb’s front-row seat to the machinations of Trump’s first term has made him an in-demand commentator on the workings of the second, and he told CBS he does not like what he sees.“Former attorney general [Robert] Jackson, the Nuremberg prosecutor, highlighted in 1940 that the most important thing at the justice department when he was attorney general was that people not target individuals, that they merely pursue crimes,” he said.“Griffin Bell years later said essentially the same thing [and] emphasized how politics and favor have no business at the justice department. It’s all about even-handedness.”Cobb said Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, has “wholly abandoned that and is now merely doing the president’s bidding when he says, ‘Prosecute my enemies, now’”.But the case against Comey, he said, was flimsy at best, and would almost certainly collapse.“The grand jury rejected one of the counts, the top count, actually, in the indictment, approved two, but by a very slim margin, 14 out of 23 in a process where there’s no defense attorney in the room, and the standard is merely probable cause,” he said.“The next courtroom that this will be assessed in, if it gets to trial, requires unanimity from 12 people, and there will be a vigorous defense. I don’t see any way in the world that Comey will be convicted. And I think there’s a good chance, because of the wholly unconstitutional, authoritarian way that this was done, that the case may get tossed out well before trial.”Separately, without mentioning Trump, his appointed FBI director Kash Patel contradicted a recent social media claim by the president that nearly 275 of the bureau’s agents were planted among the pro-Trump crowd that carried out the 2021 US Capitol attack.Patel reportedly issued a statement to Fox News Digital, according to the outlet, in which he said FBI agents at the scene of the attack were only sent to the scene after the mob attacked the Capitol in a desperate attempt to keep Trump in office despite his losing the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden.Issued Saturday night, the statement from Patel did make it a point to say that was not “the proper role of FBI agents”, among other things.In yet another bizarre social media episode for Trump, he posted – and then deleted – an artificial intelligence video in which his likeness was promoting magic medical beds that a far-right conspiracy claims can cure any ailment. The video depicted Trump touting a card guaranteeing access to new hospitals equipped with such beds. More

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      Trump says he expects charges for other adversaries after Comey indictment

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      Donald Trump said on Friday that he expected more people whom he considers his political enemies to face criminal charges, a day after the justice department indicted former FBI director James Comey and faced a torrent of criticism for enacting the president’s campaign of retribution.“It’s not a list, but I think there’ll be others,” Trump said as he departed the White House to travel to the Ryder Cup golf tournament. “I mean, they’re corrupt. They were corrupt radical left Democrats.”Trump’s blunt remarks underscored the perilous moment for his political adversaries, given that the justice department pressed ahead with criminal charges against Comey, even though it was widely seen – inside and outside the administration – to be a weak case.The indictment against Comey, filed in federal district court on Thursday in Alexandria, Virginia, alleged that he misled lawmakers in September 2020 when he stood by his previous testimony to Congress claiming he had never authorized anyone at the FBI to leak to reporters.Prosecutors alleged that statement was not true and that Comey had authorized his friend and Columbia law school professor Dan Richman to leak to reporters about an investigation into Hilary Clinton, when Richman worked for a short time as a special government employee at the FBI.But the underlying evidence against Comey, which remains unclear from the two-page indictment, was considered to be insufficient for a conviction. The issues were laid out in a memo and Erik Siebert, the then interim US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, declined to bring charges.Trump fired Siebert within days and replaced him with Lindsey Halligan, most recently a White House aide with no prosecutorial experience. Halligan was briefed on the problems with the case but pressed forward with charges anyway, presenting the case herself to the grand jury.The grand jury returned an indictment on two counts but declined to approve a third. Even then, only 14 out of 23 grand jurors voted to bring the false statement charge, barely more than the 12-person threshold, court documents show.The fraught nature of the Comey indictment raised fresh fears that Trump’s political appointees at justice department headquarters in Washington and at its field offices elsewhere will feel emboldened to pursue criminal cases against the president’s other adversaries.Among other people, Trump has fixated in recent weeks on criminal investigations against the New York attorney general Letitia James and Democratic senator Adam Schiff over mortgage fraud allegations. James brought a civil fraud case against Trump last year and Schiff led the first impeachment trial.Last weekend, before Comey’s indictment, Trump called on his attorney general Pam Bondi to pursue Comey, James and Schiff. “They impeached me twice and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!” Trump posted on Truth Social.The administration also launched a criminal investigation into former CIA director John Brennan, who Trump despises for his role in the US intelligence community’s assessment in 2016 about Russian malign influence operations aimed at helping the Trump campaign.Last month, the FBI also searched the home and office of John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser turned critic, over allegations he mishandled classified documents. The FBI recovered documents with classification markings but Bolton’s lawyer claimed they had been declassified. More

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      ‘Dangerous abuse of power’: lawmakers sound alarm over Comey indictment

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      For Donald Trump, the indictment of former FBI director and longtime foe James Comey was,“justice in America”. Legal observers and lawmakers see something far more troubling.A former Republican appointed to lead the bureau by Barack Obama and kept on by Trump until he fired him in 2017, Comey was indicted Thursday on charges related to allegedly lying to Congress five years ago during a hearing on the FBI’s investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election.The charges were filed in the eastern district of Virginia only after Erik Siebert was forced out as US attorney for reportedly finding no grounds to indict Comey. The justice department replaced him with a Trump loyalist with little prosecutorial experience, Lindsey Halligan, and shortly after, a grand jury indicted Comey on one count of making a false statement to Congress and one count of obstruction of a congressional proceeding.The indictment is the latest sign that the president is making good on his promise “to turn our justice system into a weapon for punishing and silencing his critics”, said Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee.“This kind of interference is a dangerous abuse of power. Our system depends on prosecutors making decisions based on evidence and the law, not on the personal grudges of a politician determined to settle scores,” Warner said.Adam Schiff, the Democratic senator and a former federal prosecutor who played a lead role in Trump’s first impeachment, said on X he had “never witnessed such a blatant abuse of the” justice department, calling it “little more than an arm of the president’s retribution campaign”.In a letter to Pam Bondi, the attorney general, Democrats on the Senate judiciary committee described Siebert’s firing and Comey’s indictment as “the latest steps in President Trump’s efforts to reshape the nation’s leading law enforcement agency into a weapon focused on punishing his enemies”.Top House Democrat Hakeem Jeffries said it was “crazy to me” that Trump was pursuing a “malicious prosecution” against Comey, given that the FBI chief’s public revival of an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email use days before the 2016 election is seen as playing a role in Trump’s victory.“These charges are going to be dismissed. James Comey will win in court. But what it reflects is a broader attack on the rule of law that should frighten every single American, whether you’re a Democrat, an independent or a Republican,” he said at the Capitol.Mike Zamore, national director of policy and government affairs at the American Civil Liberties Union, said Trump “has yet again proven his disdain for the principles that have actually made America great”.“By undermining the rule of law at each and every turn, threatening individuals who speak out against him, and arresting, investigating, and prosecuting elected officials of the opposition party and others who displease him, the president and his administration have corrupted our system of justice to turn his campaign of retribution into reality,” he said, adding that Trump’s public push to indict Comey amounts to “a grotesque abuse of presidential power”.Eric Swalwell, the Democratic congressman and member of the House judiciary committee, told CNN: “I promise you, when Democrats are in the majority, we are going to look at all of this, and there will be accountability, and bar licenses will be at stake in your local jurisdiction if you are corruptly indicting people where you cannot prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt on.”Norm Eisen, executive chair of pro-democracy group Democracy Defenders Fund, warned the indictment puts “the safety of every American and our national security itself in danger. This indictment has all the hallmarks of a vindictive and meritless prosecution, worthy only of the totalitarian states the United States used to oppose”.“This matters far beyond James Comey. It’s about every citizen’s right to live free from persecution by their own leaders. Criticizing our leaders is a fundamental right, regardless of how much our leaders don’t like it,” he said.Trump has spent the hours since Comey’s indictment was announced insulting him on Truth Social, calling him “One of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to” on Thursday night and “A DIRTY COP” on Friday morning.His allies have taken up his argument, if not his tone.“Comey demonstrated complete arrogance and unwillingness to comply with the law,” said Ted Cruz, the Republican senator whose exchange with the former FBI director at a 2020 hearing is the subject of the allegations.Chuck Grassley, the Republican chair of the Senate judiciary committee, said: “If the facts and the evidence support the finding that Comey lied to Congress and obstructed our work, he ought to be held accountable.”“Say it with me, Democrats: nobody is above the law,” said Mike Davis, a prominent Trump legal defender, echoing a phrase often used by Democrats when Trump and his allies were facing prosecutions before his election victory last year.“We are just getting started today with this indictment,” Davis said. “It’s going to get much worse for the Democrats.” More

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      Ex-FBI director James Comey indicted on two charges with reports that he will surrender on Friday – US politics live

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      Donald Trump on Thursday announced a new round of punishing tariffs, saying the United States will impose a 100% tariffs on imported branded drugs, 25% tariff on imports of all heavy-duty trucks and 50% tariffs on kitchen cabinets.The US president also said he would start charging a 50% tariff on bathroom vanities and a 30% tariff on upholstered furniture next week, with all the new duties to take effect from 1 October.Drug companies warned earlier this year that Americans would suffer the most if Trump decided to impose tariffs on pharmaceuticals.In 2024, the US imported nearly $233bn in pharmaceutical and medicinal products, according to the Census Bureau. The prospect of prices doubling for some medicines could send shock waves to voters as healthcare expenses, as well as the costs of Medicare and Medicaid, potentially increase.Pascal Chan, vice-president for strategic policy and supply chains at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, warned that the tariffs could harm Americans’ health with “immediate price hikes, strained insurance systems, hospital shortages, and the real risk of patients rationing or foregoing essential medicines”.Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.We start with the news that James Comey, the former FBI director and one of Donald Trump’s most frequent targets, was indicted on Thursday on one count of making a false statement to Congress and one count of obstruction of a congressional proceeding, the latest move in the president’s retribution campaign against his political adversaries.The indictment, filed in federal district court in Alexandria, Virginia, shows Comey’s charges centred on whether he lied and misled lawmakers during testimony in September 2020 about the Russia investigation.Comey was expected to surrender and have his initial appearance in federal district court on Friday morning, according to a person familiar with the matter. Comey is expected to be represented by Patrick Fitzgerald, a former US attorney for the northern district of Illinois.While the precise details were not clear in the sparse, two-page indictment, it appeared to reference Comey’s testimony that he had never authorized someone at the FBI to leak to the news media about the Trump or Hillary Clinton investigations – a claim prosecutors alleged was false.“No one is above the law. Today’s indictment reflects this Department of Justice’s commitment to holding those who abuse positions of power accountable for misleading the American people,” Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, said in a statement on Thursday.The indictment followed Trump’s instruction to Bondi to “move now” to prosecute Comey and other officials he considers political foes, in an impatient and extraordinarily direct social media post trampling on the justice department’s tradition of independence.It also came less than a week after Lindsey Halligan was installed as the top federal prosecutor in the eastern district of Virginia, after Trump fired her predecessor, Erik Siebert, after he declined to bring charges against Comey over concerns there was insufficient evidence.Halligan, most recently a White House aide and former Trump lawyer who has no prosecutorial experience, was also presented with a memo earlier this week laying out why charges should not be brought. But the justice department still pushed it through, people familiar with the matter said.Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the US senate intelligence committee, said:
      Donald Trump has made clear that he intends to turn our justice system into a weapon for punishing and silencing his critics.
      Responding to the indictment, hours after it was filed, Comey said in a video statement posted on Instagram that he was innocent and welcomed a trial.“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,” Comey said.Read the full story here:In other developments:

      Authorities said on Thursday that the words of the suspect in the shooting on Wednesday at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention facility in Texas were “definitively anti-Ice” but said that they did not find evidence that the suspect was a member of “any specific group or entity, nor did he mention any specific government agency other than Ice”.

      The Open Society Foundations (OSF), the major philanthropic group funded by George Soros, criticized the Trump administration for “politically motivated attacks on civil society” after a report that the justice department had instructed federal prosecutors to come up with plans to investigate the charity.

      Donald Trump issued a presidential memorandum on Thursday aimed at reining in what he has called a radical leftwing domestic “terror network” but which seemed likely to meet fierce legal pushback from critics depicting it as a licence for a broad crackdown on his political opponents.

      Donald Trump on Thursday announced a new round of punishing tariffs, saying the United States will impose a 100% tariffs on imported branded drugs, 25% tariff on imports of all heavy-duty trucks and 50% tariffs on kitchen cabinets. The US president also said he would start charging a 30% tariff on upholstered furniture next week.

      Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday outlining the terms of a deal to transfer TikTok to a US owner. Trump said he and China’s president Xi Jinping had come to an agreement to allow TikTok to continue operating in the US, separating the social media platform from its Chinese owner ByteDance. Trump said the deal complies with a law that would have forced the shutdown of the app for American users had it not been divested and sold to a US owner.

      A group of Disney investors is asking the company to turn over documents related to the company’s decision to temporarily suspend Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show, amid charges the media company may have been “complicit in succumbing” to media censorship.

      An impromptu statue of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein holding hands was unceremoniously removed from the National Mall in Washington just a day after a group of anonymous artists erected it there. More

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      Trump celebrates James Comey indictment as ex-FBI director says ‘I’m innocent: let’s have a trial’ – as it happened

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      This brings our live coverage of the second Trump administration to a close for the day. We will return on Friday morning. Here are the latest developments:

      Donald Trump’s long public campaign to get someone to bring criminal charges against James Comey, the former FBI director he fired in 2017, finally succeeded on Thursday, as the White House aide he installed as a prosecutor this week indicted the man Trump holds largely responsible for the Russia investigation.

      Trump celebrated the indictment of “One of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to”, in a social media post that could be used as evidence that the prosecution is politically motivated.

      “I’m not afraid, and I hope you’re not either,” Comey said in an Instagram video statement. “My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system and I’m innocent, so let’s have a trial.”

      Maurene Comey, the former FBI director’s daughter, who led the federal prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell and was fired this summer without explanation, cited Trump’s hatred of her father in a wrongful termination lawsuit filed this month.

      Ilhan Omar, the Somali-born congresswoman from Minnesota, accused Trump of inventing a story he told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday, about having supposedly asked Somalia’s president if he would “take her back.”

      Trump signed a presidential memorandum directing the justice department and the FBI’s joint terrorism taskforce to investigate what he claimed is an organized campaign of political violence and domestic terrorism funded by Democrats.

      The House Democratic campaign arm believes their lawmakers have the advantage in the tense battle over government funding, after last week refusing to back a Republican plan to prevent a shutdown unless their demands on healthcare and other issues are met.

      We leave you with video of Hillary Clinton saying in a 2016 debate: “It’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country.” He replied: “Because you’d be in jail.”
      Maurene Comey, the former FBI director’s daughter, who led the prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell and was fired this summer without explanation, cited Donald Trump’s hatred of her father in a wrongful termination lawsuit filed this month in federal court.The suit explains that Maurene Comey was “abruptly fired” on 16 July 16 from her job as an assistant US attorney in Manhattan despite an “outstanding” performance review just months earlier.The suit, which names the office of the president and the attorney general as defendants, says that they “fired Ms. Comey solely or substantially because her father is former FBI Director James B. Comey, or because of her perceived political affiliation and beliefs, or both.”It goes on to allege that Trump’s hatred of her father, and the antipathy of Trump’s outside adviser Laura Loomer, were major factors in her wrongful termination.According to the suit:
      James Comey served as the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 2013 until President Trump fired him in 2017. For the past nine years, President Trump has publicly criticized Mr. Comey for his actions while serving as FBI Director, and because after he was fired, Mr. Comey (i) wrote a memoir critical of President Trump, (ii) continued to publicly criticize President Trump and his Administration, and (iii) in May 2025 posted a message on social media that President Trump and others in the Trump Administration claimed to perceive as threatening.
      Following Mr. Comey’s May 2025 social media post and other critical statements, President Trump’s supporters called for Ms. Comey’s firing. Notable among those supporters is Laura Loomer, a social media influencer who, on information and belief, has political influence in the Trump Administration, including influence over the termination of federal employees. President Trump has publicly stated: “If you’re Loomered you’re in deep trouble. That’s the end of your career in a sense.” On May 18, 2025, Ms. Loomer called for Mr. Comey’s “liberal daughter” and her “Democrat husband” to be “FIRED from the DOJ immediately” “for being a national security risk via their proximity to a criminal [i.e., Mr. Comey] who just committed a felony by threatening to assassinate the President.” Ms. Loomer also declared that, “under [Attorney General Pamela] Blondi [sic], every Deep State Operator is being emboldened,” and she “question[ed] the impartiality of Maurene and Lucas [Maurene’s husband] in their prosecutorial roles, especially in high-profile cases, due to the undeniable bias and influence stemming from James Comey’s public criticism of Trump and the ongoing investigation into his Instagram post.”
      James Comey’s son-in-law resigned as a federal prosecutor minutes after the former FBI director was indicted Thursday.Troy Edwards wrote in an email to Lindsey Halligan, the former White House aide with no prosecutorial experience parachuted into the job as US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia this week that he was resigning “To uphold my oath to the Constitution and the country”.Edwards , who helped prosecute pro-Trump January 6 rioters later pardoned by Trump, was deputy chief of the national security section, which covers the Pentagon and CIA headquarters, and handles some of the highest-profile espionage cases.James Comey, the former FBI director, professed his innocence in a video statement posted on Instagram on Thursday after he was indicted by the former White House aide Donald Trump appointed US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia this week.“My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump,” Comey said. “But we couldn’t imagine ourselves living any other way. We will not live on our knees, and you shouldn’t either.”“I’m not afraid, and I hope you’re not either. I hope instead you are engaged, you are paying attention and you will vote like your beloved country depends upon it, which it does,” he added.“My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system and I’m innocent, so let’s have a trial. And keep the faith,” he concluded.Donald Trump’s long public campaign to get someone in his administration to bring criminal charges against James Comey, the former FBI director he fired in 2017, finally succeeded on Thursday, but the president has been so public about his loathing of the indicted man, and his desire to see him jailed, that it might be hard for prosecutors to convince a jury that the case was not brought for political reasons.Comey was fired by Trump in 2017 after he reportedly refused a request to pledge his loyalty to the newly elected president, and then publicly confirmed to Congress that the FBI was conducting a counterintelligence investigation of Russian efforts to get Trump elected president in 2016.Trump’s firing of Comey backfired, however, because it helped convince then deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein to appoint a special counsel, former FBI Director Robert Mueller, to, in his words “oversee the previously confirmed FBI investigation of Russian government efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election and related matters”.Although Mueller’s report, issued in 2019, concluded that his team “did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities”, the investigation unearthed plenty of evidence that the Russian effort did take place and, in Mueller’s words, “established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome”.Mueller added that the Trump campaign “expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts”.While Mueller ultimately elected not to charge Trump’s son, Don Jr, with violating campaign finance laws by soliciting derogatory information about Hillary Clinton from the Russian government in a meeting with a Russian lawyer in Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign, the investigation made it plain that the Trump campaign had been open to help from Russia.When a publicist for the Russian oligarch who paid Trump to stage his Miss Universe pageant in Moscow in 2013 wrote to tell Don Jr that a Russian prosecutor wanted to offer the Trump campaign “official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia, calling it “part of Russia and its government’s support to Mr Trump”, Trump’s son replied, “If it’s what you say, I love it,” and got Trump’s campaign chair Paul Manafort and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner to attend the meeting.The indictment of Comey comes as Trump seeks to use the power of the justice department to punish a man he sees as a central figure in the Russia investigation he has continually described as “a witch-hunt” and “a hoax”.One of the ironies of the situation is that Comey, who cast himself as a rigidly non-partisan law enforcement official, played an outsized role in helping Trump to get elected in the first place.It was Comey who, as FBI director in the summer of 2016, decided not to recommend criminal charges against Hillary Clinton over her use of a private email server to conduct official business while secretary of state, but took it upon himself to hold a press conference to explain his decision.In that public forum, Comey said that while Clinton and her staff had been “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information” and there was “evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information,” he had concluded, as a former prosecutor himself, that “no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case”.That news conference offered Trump, who was then running against Clinton, ammunition to describe her use of a personal email server as reckless. Trump embraced that line of attack with glee, particularly after WikiLeaks published emails from Clinton campaign aides that had been stolen by Russian government hackers.Then, days before the November election, Comey suddenly announced that the FBI had reopened its investigation of Clinton’s own emails, after copies of some mail was found on the laptop of the disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner, who was then married to Clinton’s aide Huma Abedin.Although Comey then announced, before election day, that the review of the additional emails had found nothing of substance, Clinton dropped in the polls in the closing days of the campaign, and narrowly lost to Trump.Another irony is that Comey, who has now been indicted by the new US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, is himself a former federal prosecutor in that office, who went on to serve as the US attorney for the southern district of New York, and deputy attorney general under George W Bush before later being appointed FBI director by Barack Obama in 2013.Donald Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, and FBI director, Kash Patel, welcomed the indictment of James Comey, who served as deputy attorney general during the George W Bush administration and was fired as FBI director by Donald Trump in 2017 after he told Congress that the FBI was conducting a counterintelligence investigation of Russian interference in the election of Trump as president in 2016.A justice department press release sent to reporters on Thursday began:
      Today, a federal grand jury has charged former FBI Director James Comey with serious crimes related to the disclosure of sensitive information. The indictment alleges that Comey obstructed a congressional investigation into the disclosure of sensitive information in violation of 18 USC 1505.
      The indictment also alleges that Comey made a false statement in violation of 18 USC 1001. Comey stated that he did not authorize someone at the FBI to be an anonymous source. According to the indictment that statement was false.
      The statement was followed by a quote from Bondi, which was posted on her official X account earlier. “No one is above the law,” the attorney general said. “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.”“Today, your FBI took another step in its promise of full accountability,” Patel added. “For far too long, previous corrupt leadership and their enablers weaponized federal law enforcement, damaging once proud institutions and severely eroding public trust. Every day, we continue the fight to earn that trust back, and under my leadership, this FBI will confront the problem head-on.“Nowhere was this politicization of law enforcement more blatant than during the Russiagate hoax, a disgraceful chapter in history we continue to investigate and expose. Everyone, especially those in positions of power, will be held to account – no matter their perch. No one is above the law.”Despite the intensity of those accusations from the most senior officials in the justice department, the statement included the following disclaimer, written in italics at the bottom of the page:“An indictment is merely an allegation. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.”In a sharp departure from the tradition that presidents should not comment on criminal cases, Donald Trump just celebrated the indictment of the former FBI director James Comey, in terms that could make it even easier for Comey’s lawyers to argue that he is the victim of selective prosecution.The indictment came days after Trump forced out a career prosecutor in the eastern district of Virginia who had determined that there was insufficient evidence to charge Comey, and posted a public instruction to Bondi to replace him with a White House aide, Lindsey Halligan, who could be trusted to prosecute Comey and other officials Trump holds a grudge against.“JUSTICE IN AMERICA!” Trump wrote on his social media platform. “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. He has been so bad for our Country, for so long, and is now at the beginning of being held responsible for his crimes against our Nation,” the president added.He then signed off with his political slogan: “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”As the legality of Donald Trump’s tariffs remains in doubt, the president announced three more on Thursday.Writing on his social media platform, Trump said: “I will be imposing, as of October 1st, 2025, a 25% Tariff on all “Heavy (Big!) Trucks” made in other parts of the World. Therefore, our Great Large Truck Company Manufacturers, such as Peterbilt, Kenworth, Freightliner, Mack Trucks, and others, will be protected.”In a separate post, he added: “We will be imposing a 50% Tariff on all Kitchen Cabinets, Bathroom Vanities, and associated products, starting October 1st, 2025. Additionally, we will be charging a 30% Tariff on Upholstered Furniture.”Ilhan Omar, the Somali-born congresswoman from Minnesota, accused Donald Trump of inventing a story he told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday, about having supposedly asked Somalia’s president if he would “take her back.”Omar is a naturalized US citizen who was born in Somalia and raised in a refugee camp in Kenya, but Trump has frequently treated her criticism of him as an affront to the United States from someone he still regards as a foreigner.Trump brought up Omar on Thursday in the course of a rambling answer to a question about Jasmine Crockett, a fellow Democratic congresswoman. When Trump was asked by a conservative reporter if Crockett should face “consequences” for saying, “When I see Ice, I see slave patrols,” the president repeated the racist claim he frequently makes about Black leaders who challenge him: “she is a very low IQ person.”He then brought up Omar, whose name he mispronounced, unprompted.“This is a low IQ person, who I can’t I can’t believe is a congressperson, between her and Ilman Omar,” Trump said. “I met the head of Somalia,” he continued, “And I suggested that maybe he’d like to take her back, and he didn’t want her.”As Trump’s vice-president, JD Vance, doubled over in laughter, and other members of his cabinet chuckled, the president said again: “He said, ‘I don’t want her.’”The White House was so proud of this quip that Trump’s special assistant, Margo Martin, posted video of it on an official government social media account.Omar responded by suggesting the president, who said last week he was not sure if Somalia even has a president, had made the whole thing up. “From denying Somalia had a president to making up a story, President Trump is a lying buffoon. No one should take this embarrassing fool seriously,” she wrote on X.Somalia’s president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, was in New York this week to address the United Nations, but he the US official he met with was not the president, but his advisor on African affairs, Massad Boulos, whose son is married to Trump’s daughter Tiffany.James Comey, the former FBI director and one of Donald Trump’s most frequent targets, was indicted on Thursday on one count of making a false statement to Congress and one count of obstruction of justice, according to a person familiar with the matter, in the latest move in the president’s expansive retribution campaign against his political adversaries.“No one is above the law. 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,” Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, tweeted on Thursday.The indictment came shortly after Trump instructed Bondi to “move now” to prosecute Comey and other officials he considers political foes, in an extraordinarily direct social media post trampling on the justice department’s tradition of independence.Lindsey Halligan, the president’s former lawyer who was recently sworn in as the US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, asked a grand jury to indict Comey for allegedly lying to Congress in testimony on 30 September 2020 before the five-year statute of limitations expires in the coming days. Comey’s testimony before the Senate judiciary committee was related to his handling of the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election.Halligan, who has no prosecutorial experience, was elevated to the post after Erik Siebert was forced out of the job for failing to bring indictments against Comey and Letitia James, the New York attorney general. More

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      White House aide sworn in as interim US attorney after Trump fired predecessor

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      Lindsey Halligan, a White House aide, was sworn in on Monday as the interim US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia after Donald Trump removed her predecessor who declined to bring charges against James Comey, the former FBI director, and Letitia James, the New York attorney general.The appointment of Halligan, who has no prosecutorial experience and was the most junior lawyer on Trump’s personal legal team, alarmed current and former prosecutors about political pressure to indict the president’s political enemies regardless of the strength of the evidence.For months, federal prosecutors investigated whether there was sufficient evidence to act on referrals by Trump officials at other agencies against Comey, for lying to Congress about matters related to the 2016 election, and against James, for mortgage fraud over a house she bought her niece.The prosecutors ultimately concluded that there was insufficient evidence to bring charges against either Comey or James, leading Trump to issue a series of extraordinary social media posts over the weekend demanding that the justice department seek criminal charges regardless.Halligan was sworn in shortly after noon by Pam Bondi, the attorney general, at justice department headquarters, replacing Erik Siebert, who had declined to bring the prosecutions. Interim US attorneys can only serve for 120 days but Trump is expected to submit her nomination to the Senate for a full term.Halligan’s lack of prosecutorial experience was notable given the US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia occupies one of the most sensitive posts at the justice department and oversees around 300 lawyers and staff. With the Pentagon and the CIA nearby, the office also handles sensitive national security cases.The officials who have historically been appointed as US attorney in the eastern district of Virginia have extensive experience in that office. The US attorney during Trump’s first term, G Zachary Terwilliger, had been a prosecutor there for years before being elevated to the top job.Before joining the White House, Halligan was an insurance lawyer in Florida and worked for the Save America Pac before joining the Trump legal team as the most junior lawyer, helping to draft briefs in the federal criminal case over Trump’s mishandling of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago club.A White House spokesperson defended Halligan’s appointment, saying in a statement: “Lindsey Halligan is exceptionally qualified to serve as United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. She has a proven track record of success and will serve the country with honor and distinction.”Two of Halligan’s former colleagues on the Trump legal team on the classified documents case credited her as a fast learner who provided meaningful contributions in filings. Generally, they said, they were happy to have her on the team.Halligan was at Mar-a-Lago when the FBI executed a search warrant to retrieve classified documents and, as the Florida-barred lawyer on Trump’s team, she was responsible for filing a request to have a so-called special master conduct a review of the materials that had been seized.According to a person familiar with the episode, Halligan found her account on the Pacer was not set up to file the special master request electronically and had to deliver the brief in person.During the drive from Ft Lauderdale, where she was based, to the US district court in West Palm Beach, she got stuck in traffic on the highway and realized she would not make it to the courthouse before it closed for the weekend. Halligan did a U-turn and drove back to Ft Lauderdale, where the case got assigned to the Trump-appointed US district judge Aileen Cannon.Halligan attended the subsequent court hearing on the special master request as the third-chair lawyer, one of the only times she was at counsel’s table in a federal courtroom.Within months, Halligan was in Trump’s political orbit.When Trump hosted a watch party for the 2022 midterms at Mar-a-Lago, Halligan sat at Trump’s table with Boris Epshteyn, Trump’s longtime confidant and personal lawyer; Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy; and Sergio Gor, director of the White House presidential personnel office. More

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      US attorney tasked with inquiring into Trump critics resigns after president says ‘I want him out’

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      The federal prosecutor for the eastern district of Virginia resigned Friday under intense pressure from Donald Trump, after his office determined there wasn’t sufficient evidence to charge New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, a political rival of the president, with a crime.Erik Siebert told colleagues he was resigning in a letter sent Friday, NBC News reported. Meanwhile, in an early Saturday post on his Truth Social platform, Trump maintained that Siebert didn’t quit – but rather: “I fired him!”Hours earlier, Trump bluntly told reporters in the Oval Office: “I want him out.” The president claimed he soured on Siebert because Virginia’s two Democratic senators had endorsed his nomination, but also claimed that James “is very guilty of something”. ABC News reported earlier on Friday that Trump decided to fire Siebert after he failed to obtain an indictment against James.In 2024, James filed a civil lawsuit against Trump and his company that resulted in a significant financial penalty. That penalty was thrown out in August by an appeals court that upheld a judge’s finding that Trump had engaged in fraud by exaggerating his wealth for decades.After a five-month investigation, officials did not find enough clear evidence to charge James with a crime, ABC News reported earlier this week. Trump nominated Siebert, who worked since 2010 as an assistant US attorney in that office, for the position in May.The investigation centered on the allegation that James falsely said she was going to use a home she purchased in Virginia as her primary residence. While one document indicated James intended to use the home as her primary residence, others in the transaction show James clearly indicating she intended to use it as a second home.Ed Martin, a former January 6 defendant lawyer who is leading the justice department effort to target Trump’s political rivals, pressured prosecutors to seek an indictment, according to ABC News. Bill Pulte, the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and a staunch Trump ally, who criminally referred James, had urged Trump to fire Siebert, according to ABC.Pulte also referred California senator Adam Schiff, another political rival of Trump, and the Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook for mortgage fraud. The allegations in both of those cases appear similarly thin.The justice department has long held a level of independence from the White House, an arms length seen as necessary to give Americans confidence its prosecutors and other attorneys are making enforcement decisions based on facts and not politics. Trump has upended that norm, firing career attorneys and FBI agents who worked on January 6 cases.Those fired include Maurene Comey, the daughter of former FBI director James Comey and a career prosecutor who worked on some of the highest-profile cases in the southern district of New York. Maurene Comey, who was not given a reason for her firing, sued the Trump administration this week. More