WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is attempting to prosecute James Comey for what it calls a decade-old leak of classified information, an effort the former FBI director’s lawyers immediately dismissed as invalid and outside the time limit for when the Justice Department can file a case.
“It would almost be funny if it weren’t such an appalling abuse of the Department of Justice – one that we cannot become numb to. Nothing’s changed with me; I’m still innocent, I’m still not afraid of these people — and I still believe in an independent federal judiciary. “Filing a criminal information to toll the statute of limitations is a widely recognized practice in federal court and has been approved by multiple Circuit Courts of Appeals. Bush’s Republican administration. But the relationship was strained from the start, including after Comey resisted a request by Trump at a private dinner to pledge his personal loyalty to the president — an overture that so unnerved the FBI director that he documented it in a contemporaneous memorandum.
The Justice Department, for its part, said it had filed what’s known as a criminal information to extend the 10-year statute of limitations for bringing a case. Comey was the FBI director when Trump took office in 2017, having been appointed by then-President Barack Obama, a Democrat, and serving before that as a senior Justice Department official in President George W.
“Well, they’re back — again,” Comey said in a video statement released after the documents dropped. This is an ongoing criminal investigation, and we will not comment further,” a department spokesperson said.
