A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
For more on the indictment of former FBI director James Comey, we've got Benjamin Wittes on the line. He's editor-in-chief of Lawfare and a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution. So, Ben, fair to say, you and James Comey are friends. You know each other. Have you heard from him, first of all?
BENJAMIN WITTES: If I had, I wouldn't say.
MARTÍNEZ: OK.
WITTES: You know, our - we do have a relationship. We are friends, and I try to keep that separate from my writings on the subject.
MARTÍNEZ: OK. So speaking of your writings, in Lawfare, you wrote, the Comey indictment speaks less than any charge you are ever likely to see against a prominent person in a high-profile criminal matter. How so?
WITTES: Well, so normally when a federal prosecutor brings an indictment, there's a choice, right? Do you give what's called a speaking indictment, which is an indictment that kind of tells a story about the conduct? Or do you give merely the minimum information that you have to in order to allege that a particular statute was violated by a particular person on a particular day in a manner that you describe somehow - right? - in some bare-bones fashion.
Normally when you indict a prominent person in a high-profile case, you try to tell a little bit of a story with the indictment. You have an indictment that speaks at least a little bit. This, as Carrie Johnson just described, is an indictment that is so bare-bones that it literally fits on two pages. It does not - it is not clear - though it alleges that Jim lied in a particular Senate testimony in 2020, it does not say - it doesn't give information even adequate to figure out what he is accused of having done, what statements were lies - in count two, you can't figure out - and what the conduct is that contradicts the statement that is allegedly false in count one is completely incoherent. I know this record about as well as anybody who has spent time with it, and I can't figure out what is alleged in either count.
MARTÍNEZ: Could that be part of the strategy, though? Maybe that's to come, or maybe, you know, it's an ace that they want to hold, you know, up their sleeve.
WITTES: Well, they're not going to be able to hold it for very long because, you know, you can keep - the day of the indictment, you can have an almost factless indictment, but that won't work for very long because you end up with a motion to dismiss, in which you have to articulate what the issue is. And so, yeah, if you're Lindsey Halligan, the prosecutor here, and you are an insurance lawyer who's never done criminal law before and you have been appointed to specifically bring a case that the career professionals in your office have advised against and, say, might raise ethical issues to bring and your predecessor was willing to lose his job rather than bring, you might not want to show your work either.
MARTÍNEZ: OK. So let's just say, for the sake of argument here, this is indeed a weak case, and President Trump knows it's a weak case and knows that he likely won't get a conviction out of it. Why do this?
WITTES: Well, there's a few reasons to do it. One is that he hates Jim Comey very deeply. And don't underestimate simple vindictiveness. And why does he hate Jim Comey so deeply? He hates Jim Comey deeply enough that he went after his daughter. And he went after his daughter without - you know, who was a federal prosecutor at a time that Maurene Comey - that firing Maurene Comey, whom he alleged no misconduct against - that firing Maurene Comey would exacerbate his Jeffrey Epstein problems because Maurene was, after all, the prosecutor of Ghislaine Maxwell, right? So he hates Jim Comey enough to do that.
Why does he hate Jim Comey this much? Because Jim Comey ran the Russia investigation, and the Russia investigation is still for many Americans - and in my view, rightly so - the proto-original sin of the Trump presidency. That is that he has this weird and unexplained relationship with Russia and with - that causes him to be positively putty in the hands of Vladimir Putin. And that - the public knowledge of that was a result of an investigation that Jim Comey began and led to the appointment after his firing of Bob Mueller. And that is the source of this hatred.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah. So using resources, using time from from the federal government to make James Comey's life uncomfortable for as long as he can.
WITTES: As uncomfortable, as retaliatory. Remember, Jim Comey has been out of office for eight years. And - but there's another reason, which is that if you go after your political enemies, and you - you know, you really scorched earth - you know, you go after them in a fashion that is highly unethical, that you are not going to win, you demand of your prosecutors things that could get them disbarred, you send a message to everybody else. Jim is - you know, he's a well resourced man. He's got a great legal team. He's going to be fine. But they're trying to send a message to other people, which is, don't cross us. And, you know, if you're a law firm, they're going after law firms. If you're a university, they're going after universities. If you're a Palestinian - pro-Palestinian protester, they're going after you on residency status. And if you're the former FBI director, they're saying, we will file a meritless case against you for purely vindictive reasons. And you have to see this in the context of a larger war against the president's political.
MARTÍNEZ: Ben, really quick - about 30 seconds left - what do you expect James Comey's defense to be?
WITTES: Well, so there's really going to - there's - it's an interesting question which approach the legal team will take, and I want to say, I have no inside information about this. One possibility is to engage in an effort that focuses on the vindictive nature of the prosecution and tries to reveal it. Another possibility is to force a quick trial in order to vindicate Jim Comey's innocence. A third possibility would be to try to do a combination of the two.
MARTÍNEZ: That's Ben Wittes, editor-in-chief of Lawfare. Thanks a lot.
WITTES: Thank you.
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