James Comey Indicted On Charges Stemming From 2020 Congressional Testimony

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All right, it is the NPR Politics Podcast.

I'm Danielle Kurtz-Laban.

I cover the White House.

I'm Carrie Johnson.

I cover the Justice Department.

And I'm Mara Lyasson, Senior National Political Correspondent.

Yesterday, the Justice Department indicted former FBI Director James Comey.

President Trump has long sought retribution against his perceived political enemies, and Comey is one of them.

Today on the show, is the Justice Department making good on that promise?

Now, there's a lot to get at here.

This is a long brewing story, so we're going to walk through it.

Carrie, what exactly does the indictment say Comey did wrong?

Jim Comey is charged with two crimes.

One is making a false statement, and the second is obstructing a congressional proceeding.

And both of these charges seem to stem from Senate judiciary testimony Comey gave nearly five years ago in September 2020.

There, he was asked a lot of questions about the FBI's investigation into Russian election interference in 2016, and also some questions about media leaks and whether he authorized one of them.

Comey said he did not authorize it.

The indictment says he did.

The indictment is so bare bones, it's really hard to see what he's alleged to have done wrong in this case.

Overnight, we did hear from Jim Comey himself.

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.

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.

So, Carrie, if all of this stems from something he said five years ago, why is this happening now?

Simple answer.

The statute of limitations was about to expire within just a few days.

It was a five-year statute of limitations, and the Justice Department was under the gun from the White House to get this done and fast.

The reason we know that is because over the weekend, President Trump actually posted about it on social media, advising Attorney General Pam Bondi to hurry up and bring this case.

All right, Marl, let me turn to you.

Why is this specific indictment significant?

It feels like a big deal.

It is a big deal.

And many people feel it's a tipping point, that it marks the end of the post-Watergate reforms, which enshrined a whole bunch of norms, not laws, but norms, to make sure that presidents could not interfere in the affairs of the Justice Department.

In other words, the rule of law, which means there's a level playing field, facts and evidence drive the decision to prosecute or not, not whether you are an enemy or a friend of the president.

Now there is the sense that that's over.

And Donald Trump ran on this.

He said he wanted the Department of Justice to be his personal revenge agency, and that's what he's doing.

And today he did talk to reporters outside the White House, and here's a little bit of what he had to say.

say.

It's about justice, really.

It's not revenge.

It's about

the fact that you can't let this go on.

They are sick radical left people, and they can't get away with it.

And

Comey was one of the people.

He wasn't the biggest, but he's a dirty cop.

You know, he's been talking about sick radical left people for years.

That's not new.

But a minute earlier, he did say something that was very revealing about his true motives for wanting this case to be brought.

For four years, years they went after me.

They went after me for four years and that doesn't include the four great years that we had in the White House.

And that's really what he's talking about.

They went after me.

I want to go after them.

I want to get revenge.

All right, so Carrie, what do we know about the lawyers who are bringing this case?

This is also a very unusual situation.

What happened here is that there was a longtime prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia.

He thought the evidence against Comey was weak.

He did not want to proceed.

And at the end of last week, the White House forced him out of his job.

He actually was forced to leave that job.

And instead, this guy was replaced by a woman named Lindsay Halligan.

She is an insurance lawyer.

She was part of Trump's circle around Mar-a-Lago in Florida.

And most recently, the president had put her in charge of scrubbing what Trump calls woke ideology from the Smithsonian museums.

Lindsay Halligan has no experience as a prosecutor, none at all.

And yet it was her name on this Comey indictment when it came down last night from the grand jury.

Wait, so why would Trump pick someone so inexperienced?

This is a person who helped defend him in his Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, and she's a trusted member of his orbit.

It may also be

that people with less experience as federal prosecutors and less judgment in some of these cases may be more willing to do what the White House and Attorney General Pam Bondi want to see happen.

And don't forget, the way his whole acrimony with Comey started was when Comey said Trump asked him for loyalty.

Remember, he said, I want loyalty.

And Comey said, I can give you honesty.

And he has a prosecutor now who's going to give him loyalty.

And it's worth noting that on the other side of this case is Jim Comey, who himself was the deputy attorney general, the second in command inside the the Justice Department in the George W.

Bush years, is a good lawyer.

And his attorney is his longtime friend and former prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, who was the U.S.

Attorney in Chicago and also prosecuted the leak of a CIA operative's name in the Bush years.

So this is quite a lot of legal firepower on the other side.

Wow.

Although we should say that Trump doesn't really care if he wins this case.

Wait, wow.

In other words, a conviction is not necessarily the goal.

James Comey has lots of money.

He is a great lawyer.

So he can defend himself.

But this sends a message to other people.

Don't cross me, I'll come after you, I'll bankrupt you, I'll ruin your career, even if I can't send you to jail.

All right, we are going to take a quick break.

More in a moment.

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And we are back.

We've been discussing a new indictment of former FBI Director James Comey.

Now this fits into a broader effort by the Trump administration to remake the Justice Department.

Kerry, you watch the Justice Department closely.

What should we know about what he has changed?

There's been a wholesale reordering of the Justice Department in just something like eight months.

Three in four lawyers in the Civil Rights Division have left.

Prosecutors who worked to investigate Donald Trump in the years when he was out of office were fired early on.

Other people were fired or quit their jobs as career prosecutors because they say they were asked to do things they thought were unethical or to make misrepresentations to courts about stuff like the deportation of migrants, for instance.

And so it's been a very rocky time over at justice and there's a lot of concern that the long traditions of treating people the same no matter who they are and who they know that those things are now out the window this is a thing that i have been wondering watching people leave of those people who have left of their own volition do you know have any spoken to you are they conflicted as in choosing between stay and try to do the job the way that i think it should be done or leave and let someone who might do the job differently take over yeah there's been a lot of soul searching about that very issue some people are trying to stay as long as they can until a red line in their mind is crossed by this administration, until they specifically are asked to do something they believe is lawless.

Other people think that line has already been crossed, and you can't really continue to serve in this DOJ and maintain your sense of self and integrity and the traditions you were taught as a prosecutor a long time ago.

So the new people in the Justice Department.

Practically speaking, how have they changed the agency's work, its focus?

Well, the priorities have changed a lot in this administration, and that's not all that unusual.

And it seems totally fine in terms of the president has a lot of prerogative here to transfer FBI agents and ATF agents, say, to do immigration enforcement or do federal surges in places like D.C.

and Los Angeles.

The question is, some of the lawyers who are in court day to day defending some of Trump's executive orders and other policies, they're so cut to the bone, they're so overworked, and some of them are so concerned about keeping their integrity with the courts that those teams are very, very understaffed.

They're making mistakes, and it's been a real challenge for them.

Now, Mara, on the campaign trail, we both know Trump talked about revenge a lot.

He talked about the justice system being weaponized against him a lot.

How much of what he's doing now stems from his campaign trail?

Oh, I think it's exactly what he promised to do.

He said he wanted the Department of Justice to carry out his program of revenge.

He talked about how Article II II gives him the right to do anything he wants.

Article II, of course, is the one establishing the executive branch.

And don't forget, this isn't just Trump being transparent and doing what he said he would do during the campaign.

The Supreme Court did something very important when they gave him immunity.

So there are no criminal legal consequences for him to break these norms that have governed every other president.

Other presidents could have done this.

There wasn't a law against it, but they didn't.

They wanted the public to believe and to have faith in the Justice Department that there was rule of law, that there would be a level playing field, that everyone would be treated the same, even if they were a friend or an enemy of the president's.

Because they feel that in a democracy, people have to have faith in institutions that they're not corrupt.

The opposite of the rule of law is corruption.

And Donald Trump really doesn't care what people think about him.

First of all, he has immunity, but also he's not going to run for another term.

Yeah, and congruently, it strikes me that maybe this fits into what he's doing in other areas of government, like trying to influence the Federal Reserve, which is an independent entity.

Because he believes that Article II gives him the right to do anything he wants, that he should have complete control, not just over the executive branch, but also over the other two branches.

Gotcha.

That's what authoritarianism is.

It's not the rule of law, it's the rule of one guy.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: So, this all might feel far removed to a lot of people, to a lot of our listeners.

When might people start feeling the effects of these changes in the Justice Department?

Will people ever feel these effects?

I think there is some evidence that's already occurring, Danielle.

And we have some evidence here in D.C.

that grand juries have actually refused to indict people caught up in this federal surge in the city something like 11 times.

I talk with old-time lawyers, guys who spent 25, 30 years, 35 years in that office.

That almost never happened.

And it happened 11 times in D.C.

in the last month.

The other thing is that judges are no longer taking the Justice Department's word for things.

They're demanding more evidence.

And that's a sign, too, that some of the credibility the DOJ has built up in these places has now been lost.

The Comey grand jury refused one of the counts, which is interesting.

And you know, the old adage is that a grand jury will indict even a ham sandwich.

They're kind of putty in the hands of the prosecutors.

Well, guess what?

They refuse to indict the guy who threw a sandwich at a federal agent.

Okay, so Comey indicted now, but Trump may not stop there.

Who could be next?

Yeah, the president has been pretty blatant about this.

He talked about New York Attorney General Tish James.

He's He's talked about California Democratic Senator Adam Schiff.

There's an entire group in the Justice Department that's been set up to what they say is root out weaponization inside the DOJ.

But instead, they appear to be pursuing a list of people who have run a foul at Donald Trump.

The president even talked about that today outside of the White House.

It's not a list, but I think there'll be others.

I mean, they're corrupt.

All right, so we should expect more, in short.

I think we should expect more, possibly as soon as this afternoon.

So we're all going to be kind of busy for a long time.

Final question.

What is next in the Comey indictment?

When is he arraigned?

Comey is scheduled to be in court October 9th, along with his lawyer, Pat Fitzgerald.

They have a number of defenses at their disposal.

One is that because President Trump has been so upfront about wanting to get revenge against Jim Comey, that Comey may decide to file a motion that he's being prosecuted vindictively and to get the judge to throw out the case before it ever gets to a jury.

Interestingly enough, this judge is a longtime former public defender who also served as a magistrate.

He's got a lot of experience in the courts.

All right, we're going to take a quick break, and when we get back, it's time for Can't Let It Go.

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And we are back, and it's time to end the show like we do every Friday with Can't Let It Go.

This is the part of the show where we talk about the things from the week that we just can't stop thinking about, politics or otherwise.

Carrie Johnson, you are up first.

What can't you let go of?

Okay, I'm embracing my Gen X status, and I'm going to pick the idea that legendary skateboarder Tony Hawk, one of his boards just sold for over $1 million.

This is a board that he rode in the X Games in 1999.

Uh-huh.

He did the first ever 900 trick, what that is, two and a half turns, which is like a really big and dangerous thing to do.

And he succeeded.

And happily enough, I love Tony Hawk also because his son married Kurt Cobain's daughter.

And now they have a family together.

Francis Beans.

So it makes me so happy to see that loving couple and something very good to have come out of their relationship.

That is an excellent 90s themed Can't Let It Go.

I love it.

Marla Lyison, how about you?

What can't you let it go?

Okay, well, today we were talking about the rule of law.

My Can't Let It Go this week is the rule of the jungle or the urban jungle.

Yeah.

Because there was an aggressive squirrel.

It's attacked two people in California, in the San Francisco area.

It sent both of them to the hospital.

We don't know if this was a deranged squirrel or a starving squirrel or a diseased squirrel.

More than five people have been attacked by him.

He's very mean and comes out of nowhere.

So this is to me extraordinary.

Squirrels have been coexisting with humans in cities for hundreds and hundreds of years and I just wonder if this is another example about how we just can't get along anymore with other people or species and how everything these days is us versus them, even with small furry urban wildlife.

You mentioned that he might be deranged or diseased.

What if he has a motive?

Mote if he has a motive.

Yeah,

Maybe this is a rational squirrel.

One woman was walking in her neighborhood, and the squirrel seemingly came out of nowhere and attacked her leg.

The other time, the squirrel launched itself and

went up to a woman's face, but then landed on her leg.

I'm sorry.

It launched itself from the ground to her face and wound up on her arm, not leg.

They're rodents.

And they're all these flyers.

They've been posted warning residents, this is no joke, that the squirrel is very mean and he comes comes out of nowhere.

Listeners, you can't see this, but Carrie and I both kind of flapped our hands and discussed about this whole thing.

I'm very alarmed.

No, this is upsetting.

I'm not going to let this go for a while.

It's nightmare fuel.

All right, I will go last here.

Let me tell you guys what I can't let go of.

It is a, it's become a trend on TikTok.

It was kicked off by a woman named Phoebe Adams.

Have you guys ever shopped at Anthropology?

Oh, hell yes.

Okay, absolutely.

So you are aware of their expensive home goods.

Expensive.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Understatement, right?

So a woman named Phoebe Adams posted a TikTok where she opens up a box, ostensibly, that has been sent to her house, and pulls out a rock and tells her boyfriend, my rock from anthropology just arrived.

Isn't it beautiful?

And he's like, how much did it cost?

She goes, $150.

It was on sale.

And this has ballooned.

She made a sequel where the anthropology store got in on it.

Oh.

She brought him into the store and there was a rock display and it said 50% off.

She picks up a rock and she's like, it's only $1,000.

And her, her boyfriend, meanwhile, is going bonkers, losing his mind over the idiocy of this.

But I have seen multiple kind of copycat videos where people pull this on their relatives.

And

first of all, it's funny.

But second of all, the fact that Anthropology got in on it, I don't know how to feel about this.

Like, yeah, so you're aware that you are overpricing your various candles and stuff and you're playing it.

It just feels, it feels like anthropology saying, you're welcome, America.

Come get $75 candles.

We're doing great.

Yeah.

That said, I still covet half the stuff that they sell.

So what can I say?

They have nice dresses.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, absolutely.

Yeah.

Okay, that is a wrap for today.

Our executive producer is Mathoni Maturi.

Our editor is Rachel Bay.

Our producers are Casey Morell and Bria Sucks.

Thank you to Kelsey Snell and Krishnadev Kalimer.

I am Danielle Kurtzlaban.

I cover the White House.

I'm Carrie Johnson.

I cover the Justice Room.

And I'm Mara Lyasson, Senior National Political Correspondent.

And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.

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