Former FBI head James Comey calls Trump a ‘tyrant’ following his indictment for lying to

Former FBI Director James Comey called Trump ‘a tyrant’ and refused to back down after he was indicted by the Department of Justice on one count of making false statements and one count of obstruction.

He was investigated in connection with his September 30, 2020 testimony on what was known as ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ by the FBI, the original probe into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia in 2016.  

The grand jury declined to indict Comey on a third count, which was a second count of making false statements, according to documents obtained by the Daily Mail. 

Comey has been a staunch critic of Donald Trump‘s administration since the president fired him in 2017.

Attorney General Pam Bondi confirmed the charges in a post to social media Thursday evening. 

‘No one is above the law. Today’s indictment reflects this Department of Justice’s commitment to holding those who abuse positions of power accountable for misleading the American people. We will follow the facts in this case.’ 

Donald Trump celebrated the indictment on Truth Social: ‘JUSTICE IN AMERICA! One of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to is James Comey, the former Corrupt Head of the FBI. Today he was indicted by a Grand Jury on two felony counts for various illegal and unlawful acts. He has been so bad for our Country, for so long, and is now at the beginning of being held responsible for his crimes against our Nation. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!’ 

Comey released a statement of his own in an Instagram video, saying: ‘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.’

‘Somebody that I love dearly recently said that fear is the tool of a tyrant and she’s right but I’m not afraid and I hope you’re not either. I hope instead you’re engaged, you’re paying attention and you will vote like your beloved country depends on it, which it does,’ he said, referencing his daughter Maurene.

‘My heart is broken for the Department of Justice but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system. I’m innocent, so let’s have a trial and keep the faith,’ added Comey, who CNN reported is expected to surrender on Friday. 

The indictment makes Comey the first former senior government official to face prosecution in connection with one of Trump´s chief grievances: the long-concluded investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. 

Trump and his supporters have long derided that investigation as a ‘hoax’ and a ‘witch hunt’ despite multiple government reviews showing Moscow interfered on behalf of the Republican´s campaign.

The criminal case is likely to deepen concerns that the Justice Department under Bondi, a Trump loyalist, is being weaponized in pursuit of investigations and now prosecutions of public figures the president regards as his political enemies. 

It was filed as the White House has taken steps to exert influence in unprecedented ways on the operations of the Justice Department, blurring the line between law and politics for an agency where independence in prosecutorial decision-making is a foundational principle.

Comey was fired months into Trump´s first administration and has long been a top target for Trump supporters seeking retribution. 

He was singled out by name in a Saturday social media post in which Trump complained directly to Bondi that she had not yet brought charges against him.

The following evening, Trump said in a Truth Social post aimed at the attorney general that department investigations had not resulted in prosecutions. 

He said he would nominate Lindsey Halligan, a White House aide, to serve as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. 

She has been one of Trump’s personal lawyers and does not have experience as a federal prosecutor.

‘We can´t delay any longer, it´s killing our reputation and credibility,’ Trump wrote, referencing the fact that he himself had been indicted and impeached multiple times. ‘JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!’

The office that filed the case against Comey, the Eastern District of Virginia, was thrown into turmoil last week following the resignation of chief prosecutor Erik Siebert under pressure to bring charges against another Trump target, New York Attorney General Letitia James, in a mortgage fraud investigation.

Comey´s son-in-law resigned as a federal prosecutor minutes after the former FBI director was indicted Thursday.

Troy Edwards quit his job ‘to uphold my oath to the Constitution and the country,’ he wrote in a one-sentence resignation letter addressed to Lindsay Halligan, the newly appointed U.S. Attorney in Virginia´s Eastern District, the office that charged Comey.

Edwards was the the deputy chief of the National Security Section, a prestigious role in a U.S. attorney´s office that covers the Pentagon and CIA headquarters, handling some of the highest-profile espionage cases.

Halligan had rushed to present the case to a grand jury this week. Prosecutors were evaluating whether Comey lied to Congress during testimony on Sept. 30, 2020, and they had until Tuesday to bring a case before the five-year statute of limitations expired. 

The push to move forward came even as prosecutors in the office had detailed in a memo concerns about the pursuit of an indictment. 

Trump has for years railed against both a finding by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia preferred him to Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election and the criminal investigation that tried to determine whether his campaign had conspired with Moscow to sway the outcome of that race. 

Prosecutors led by special counsel Robert Mueller did not establish that Trump or his associates criminally colluded with Russia, but they did find that Trump´s campaign had welcomed Moscow´s assistance.

Trump has seized on the fact that Mueller´s investigation did not find that the Trump campaign and the Kremlin colluded, and that there were significant errors and omissions made by the FBI in wiretap applications, to claim vindication. 

A yearslong investigation into potential misconduct during the Russia investigation, was conducted by a different special counsel, John Durham. 

That produced three criminal cases, including against an FBI lawyer, but not against senior government officials.

The criminal case against Comey does not concern the substance of the Russia investigation. 

Rather, it accuses him of having lied to a Senate committee in his 2020 appearance when he said he never authorized anyone to serve as an anonymous source to a reporter about the investigation.

Trump´s administration is trying to cast the Russia investigation as the outgrowth of an effort under Democratic President Barack Obama to overhype Moscow´s interference in the election and to undermine the legitimacy of Trump´s victory. 

Administration officials, including CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, have declassified a series of documents meant to chip away at the strength of an Obama-era intelligence assessment published in January 2017 that said Moscow had engaged in a broad campaign of interference at the direction of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Comey has for years been a prime Trump antagonist. Comey was a senior Justice Department official in Republican President George W. Bush´s administration, was picked by Obama to lead the FBI in 2013 and was director when the bureau opened the Russia investigation.

Comey´s relationship with Trump was strained from the start and was exacerbated when Comey resisted a request by Trump at a private White House dinner to pledge personal loyalty to the president. That overture so unnerved the FBI director that he documented it in a contemporaneous memorandum.

Trump fired Comey in May 2017, an action later investigated by Mueller for potential obstruction of justice.

After being let go, Comey authorized a close friend to share with a reporter the substance of an unclassified memo that documented an Oval Office request from Trump to shut down an FBI investigation into his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn. 

Trump and his allies later branded Comey a leaker, with the president even accusing him of treason. 

Comey himself has called Trump ‘ego driven’ and likened him to a mafia don.

The Justice Department, during Trump´s first term, declined to prosecute Comey over his handling of his memos. 

The department´s inspector general did issue a harshly critical report in 2019 that said Comey violated FBI policies, including by failing to return the documents to the FBI after he was dismissed and for sharing them with his personal lawyers without FBI permission.

Earlier this year, the department fired Comey´s daughter, Maurene Comey, from her job as a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York. 

She has since sued, saying the termination was carried out without any explanation and was done for political reasons.