Former FBI Director James Comey put President Donald Trump on blast in a video celebrating the dismissal of the federal indictment against him.
A federal judge on Monday threw out cases brought by U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan against Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, another Trump adversary, ruling that Halligan had been appointed illegally.
Comey, 64, hailed the decision in an Instagram video, calling the case “a prosecution based on malevolence and incompetence, and a reflection of what the Department of Justice has become under Donald Trump.”
The former FBI director—whom Trump, 79, blames for triggering special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election—said the case “matters because a message has to be sent that the President of the United States cannot use the Department of Justice to target his political enemies.”
“I don’t care what your politics are,” he added. “You have to see that as fundamentally un-American and a threat to the rule of law that keeps all of us free.”
Comey, who served as FBI director from 2013 until Trump fired him in 2017, warned that the president would “probably come after me again,” but stressed that he was “not afraid.”
“I believe in an independent federal judiciary, the gift from our founders that protects us from a would-be tyrant,” he said.
Comey called on Americans “to stand up and show the fools who would frighten us—who would divide us—that we’re made of stronger stuff, that we believe in the rule of law, that we believe in the importance of doing things by the law.”
Comey pleaded not guilty last month to the charges brought against him, which relate to claims that he lied to Congress while giving testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in September 2020.
Halligan, 36, sought to prosecute Comey after Attorney General Pam Bondi appointed her Interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia following the resignation of her predecessor Erik Siebert, who had stepped down amid pressure to bring indictments against the president’s perceived enemies.
In the Instagram video, Comey said he felt “inspired by the example of the career people who refused to be part of this travesty.”
“It cost some of them their jobs, which is painful, but it preserved their integrity, which is beyond price,” he said.
Comey had asked the court to quash Halligan’s case, claiming selective and vindictive prosecution based on Trump’s very public demand that he be charged. He had also argued that Halligan was serving illegally.
On Monday, Judge Cameron McGowan Currie, a Bill Clinton appointee, agreed that Halligan “had no lawful authority to present the indictment,” ruling that the district court, rather than Bondi, has the authority to make the interim appointment.
Because Currie dismissed the case without prejudice, it leaves the door open to future charges.
Thanking his friends and family, Comey also applauded his lawyers, saying he hoped that they would serve as an example to big law firms “to participate in protecting our liberty, protecting the rule of law.”
Bondi told reporters that the DOJ would be “taking all available legal action, including an immediate appeal” to hold Comey and James “accountable for their unlawful conduct.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
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