Donald Trump’s in trouble if James Comey’s legal team choose to call up former special counsel John Durham as part of his defense.
The Justice Department last month charged the former FBI director with allegedly lying to a Senate committee in 2020 about authorizing media leaks tied to the bureau’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
But prosecutors at the Eastern District of Virginia, the DOJ office behind Comey’s indictment, have apparently already interviewed former special counsel John Durham, who spent four years investigating MAGA’s claims that the FBI’s probe was politically motivated.
ABC News, citing sources familiar with the matter, reports Durham told investigators earlier in August he had “been unable to uncover evidence that would support false statements or obstruction charges against the former FBI director.” Prosecutors apparently heard precisely the same story from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C. during a separate meeting.
Trump made the shock decision to effectively fire Eric Siebert as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia in September after he’d told the MAGA administration any charges against Comey would be unlikely to hold water before a court.
His replacement Lindsey Halligan saw fit to override the office’s recommendations and indict Comey anyway. “The balance of power is a bedrock principle of our democracy, and it relies upon accountability and forthright presentation of facts from executive leadership to congressional oversight,” Halligan said in a statement on those charges.
Formerly a member of Trump’s personal legal defense team, Halligan has zero prosecutorial experience, but did twice run for the title of Miss Colorado USA. Her decision to bring the charges has raised alarm the MAGA administration may now be pushing ahead with a long-promised campaign of retribution against Trump’s political enemies.
“There’ll be others,” Trump has said of the proceedings against Comey, which had followed after he literally called for Attorney General Pam Bondi to charge Comey, among other longstanding nemeses, in a vicious Truth Social screed last month. “They weaponized the Justice Department like nobody in history. What they’ve done is terrible.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the Justice Department and Durham’s representatives for comment.
The post Comey Investigator Could Aid Defense in Major Blow to Trump appeared first on The Daily Beast.
