I expressed my reservations about the indictment of James Comey here. Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy takes a deep dive into the facts relevant to the indictment, and concludes that it should be thrown out of court.
This is what the indictment says:
On or about September 30, 2020, in the Eastern District of Virginia, the defendant, JAMES B. COMEY JR., did willfully and knowingly make a materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statement…by falsely stating to a U.S. Senator during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that he, JAMES B. COMEY JR., had not “authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports” regarding an FBI investigation concerning Person 1.
This is a much-investigated episode. The “someone else” is then-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, Person 1 is Hillary Clinton, and the “news reports” consist entirely or mainly of a story or stories in the Wall Street Journal about the FBI’s investigation of the Clinton Foundation.
The problem, McCarthy says, is that the known facts contradict the indictment:
To repeat, Comey disputed that McCabe told him, before or after the fact, that he (McCabe) had authorized the leak — he says that when they discussed the WSJ article, Comey was upset about it and McCabe acted like he’d had nothing to do with it (which is consistent with the fact that, after causing the leak, McCabe dressed down agents in New York over the leak — suggesting that they were responsible for it in order to divert attention from himself). Like [DOJ Inspector General] Horowitz, I believe it’s obvious that Comey was telling the truth about that. For present purposes, however, it makes no difference.
In his testimony, Comey obviously understood Cruz to be asking whether Comey had authorized McCabe to leak to the WSJ prior to the McCabe’s doing so. But McCabe had never said Comey authorized the leak; McCabe said that he himself authorized the leak and told Comey about it afterwards, and that Comey didn’t seem to have a problem with it. McCabe probably lied about telling Comey post facto and about Comey’s not having a problem with the leak; but the point is that McCabe didn’t say Comey authorized the leak — he said he informed Comey afterwards.
A rational juror could not convict Comey of perjury on that record. Cruz garbled what is meant by the word “authorize”; McCabe didn’t claim Comey authorized the leak; ergo, there is no evidence — much less proof beyond a reasonable doubt — that Comey was lying when he told Cruz he hadn’t authorized McCabe’s leak.
Unfortunately, when this prosecution fails, the Democratic Party press will use Comey’s exoneration on this trivial point as a refutation of the Russia Collusion Hoax, which Comey helped to perpetrate, to what should be his everlasting shame.
