The US Justice Department formally charged former FBI Director James Comey on Thursday with “false testimony and obstruction” in the investigation into possible collusion with Russia in the campaign that brought Donald Trump to his first term, an alleged operation dubbed “Russiagate” by his administration.
“A federal grand jury has returned an indictment against former FBI Director James Comey for false testimony and obstruction in connection with his oral testimony before the United States Senate Judiciary Committee on September 30, 2020,” the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia announced in a statement posted on its website.
“The charges alleged in this case represent an abuse of public trust on an extraordinary scale,” District Attorney Lindsey Halligan stated in the document. Halligan defended “the balance of power,” based, in her view, “on accountability and the straightforward presentation of the facts,” as a fundamental principle of American democracy.
Comey, who denied the accusations in a video posted on his Instagram account, faces up to five years in prison, although, according to the Attorney General’s statement, “sentences for federal crimes are typically less than the maximum penalties.”
The indictment came five days after Trump urged Attorney General Pam Bondi, through Truth Social, to expedite proceedings against the former FBI director and other figures with whom he has clashed, such as Democratic Senator Adam Schiff and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Now that the first of them has been charged, Trump has once again taken to social media to celebrate the “justice in America” against someone he has described as “corrupt” and “one of the worst human beings” in U.S. history. “He has been so damaging to our country for so long, and now he is about to be held accountable for his crimes against our nation,” he added.
Bondi also commented on the matter, emphasizing that “no one is above the law” in a statement released by the State Department’s Office of Public Affairs. In it, the prosecutor emphasized that the indictment against Comey reflects the department’s “commitment” to “holding accountable those who abuse positions of power for deceiving the American people.”
Furthermore, the document also includes statements from current FBI Director Kash Patel, who presented the indictment as “one more step” in his department’s promise to pursue accountability.
“For too long, corrupt leaders of the past and their enablers used federal law enforcement as a weapon, damaging once-respected institutions and severely eroding public trust,” Patel lamented, rejecting what she called the “most blatant politicization of law enforcement… a shameful chapter in history.”
The investigation into alleged collusion with Moscow in Trump’s first presidential campaign, dubbed “Russiagate,” has been a recurring target of the Republican president’s interventions and his cabinet’s investigations into Democratic administrations.
Along these lines, last July, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard singled out former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Barack Obama, despite the latter’s denials of the allegations.
This alleged Russian interference, which the Kremlin has always denied, was the subject of a two-year investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller, whose final report stated that he had found no evidence of collusion between Trump and Kremlin officials.
