President Donald Trump attacked James Comes as a “sick guy” on Thursday but denied any direct involvement in reported efforts by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia to manufacture a criminal case against the former FBI director.
Trump was speaking to reporters ahead of a bilateral lunch meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayip Erdogan at the White House on Thursday, a day after MSNBC and other news outlets reported that prosecutor’s in Virginia were preparing to file criminal charges against Comey.
The former FBI director ran the agency until mid-2017, when he was fired by Trump over frustration around Comey’s refusal to shut down the investigation into whether there was collusion between Russian operatives and the Trump campaign or publicly rule out the idea that Trump himself was under scrutiny.
In typical fashion, Trump lashed out at Comey in his response to a reporter’s question about the supposedly imminent charges in Virginia — for which the statute of limitations runs out Tuesday —but demurred on his own involvement: “he did terrible things at the FBI and but I don’t know. I have no idea what’s going to happen.”
“They’re going to make a determination. I’m not making that determination. I think I’d be allowed to get involved in that one, but I don’t really choose to do so,” said the president. “I can only say that Comey is a bad person. He’s a sick person. I think he’s a sick guy.
“I can’t tell you what’s going to happen, because I don’t know,” the president insisted.
The Independent reached out to Comey over the president’s remarks and reports of his potential criminal charging but did not immediately get a response
Trump’s denial of personal involvement in the case is notable given the breadth of reporting indicating his push to form a team of loyalists charged with identifying individual political foes of the president and punishing them with politically-motivated criminal cases.
The effort, which is known to involve special attorney Ed Martin at the Department of Justice and William Pulte at the Federal Housing Finance Agency, has led to criminal referrals to the Justice Department for Sen. Adam Schiff — a key opponent of Trump’s in Congress, and others. The team was reported to be going after Comey as well.
Other targets of the administration, including Schiff and New York Attorney General Letitia James have not been charged. The former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik Siebert, resigned rather than take up a politically-motivated case against James.
On Monday, Trump engineered the installation of a former White House aide, Lindsey Halligan, in the role vacated by Siebert — where, by law, the novice to federal criminal prosecutions is allowed to serve for three months as acting U.S. attorney.
In social media postings and in remarks Thursday during his meeting with Erdogan at the White House, Trump has insinuated that Halligan will deliver on the demands he laid publicly at the feet of his attorney general, Pam Bondi, in a Truth Social post on Saturday.
Halligan, who would end up overseeing Comey’s case if the former FBI director were to be brought up on charges, has never prosecuted a case in state or federal court.
The extent of the charges Justice officials are considering to attach to Comey’s name are not yet known, but MSNBC reported that the list will likely include allegedly deceiving Congress while under oath in 2020, when he testified to the House Oversight Committee that he’d never authorized leaks to the media pertaining to the Trump-Russia investigation.
The statute of limitations restricting prosecution of perjury past a certain date is set to expire for that potential charge on Tuesday.
