BREAKING: James Comey fights back, accusing Trump’s DOJ of “vindictive prosecution” in scorching motion
James Comey is not going quietly. The former FBI director just filed a blistering 54-page motion to throw out his indictment, accusing Trump and his Justice Department of weaponizing the law to punish an enemy over a social media post.
The charges stem from a post in which Comey showed seashells arranged to read “86 47,” which the DOJ claims was a serious threat against the president. Comey’s filing tears that apart, arguing the post was protected speech under the First Amendment and that the entire case exists for one reason: Trump’s personal grudge against him.
The motion lays out a damning timeline. This is the second indictment the DOJ has secured against Comey in under a year, both, he says, at Trump’s direction. The first came after Trump publicly ordered the department to prosecute him, executed by a White House aide improperly installed as U.S. Attorney. That indictment was so defective a court quickly tossed it, and Trump responded by firing the Attorney General.
Comey’s argument is blunt. This prosecution, he writes, is not a good-faith application of the law but the product of “a years-long campaign by the President to use the criminal process to punish Mr. Comey for his protected speech” out of “deep-seated animosity.” He points out that for decades the DOJ’s independence guarded against exactly this, using criminal charges to settle political scores, and that these prosecutions mark a sharp break from that tradition.
Much of his evidence, he notes, comes straight from the government’s own officials and their public statements. That is the heart of it. A former FBI director is standing up in court and saying the president is bending the justice system to hunt his enemies, and he is daring a judge to look at the record and see it. Thank you, Mr. Comey, for refusing to let this go unchallenged.-Really American