"On Thursday, a federal grand jury indicted former FBI Director James Comey for lying to Congress and obstructing a congressional investigation. These charges mark the culmination of President Donald Trump's yearslong campaign of retribution against Comey, whom he blames for hobbling his presidency by investigating alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election. Trump had already fired Comey from the FBI in 2017, but apparently that was not enough: He also seeks to put his adversary behind bars."
"This sequence of events amounts to a shocking attack on the rule of law, obliterating the Justice Department's traditional and essential independence, transforming it into a blunt instrument of presidential retribution. On this week's episode of Amicus, co-hosts Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern discussed the Rubicon-crossing indictment and how Comey can use Trump's transparent orchestration of the case to defeat the charges against him."
"Dahlia Lithwick: This indictment is really alarming and, for many of us, actually break-the-glass terrifying. I want to break down the news as crisply as possible, which actually means starting with the murky part: What is it that Jim Comey has been indicted for? Mark Joseph Stern: The indictment is less than two pages, which is extremely unusual; these things are usually much longer because they usually allege an actual fact pattern of criminality, which didn't happen here."
A federal grand jury indicted former FBI Director James Comey for lying to Congress and obstructing a congressional investigation. The indictment follows President Donald Trump's long campaign of retribution against Comey, who is blamed for hobbling Trump's presidency by probing alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election. Trump fired Comey in 2017 and then removed qualified prosecutors who refused to pursue dubious charges, replacing them with an unqualified loyalist while openly pressuring the Justice Department to charge Comey. The sequence of events erodes DOJ independence and turns it into a tool of presidential retribution, and the indictment appears unusually brief and lacking a clear factual pattern of criminality.
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