Former FBI Director James Comey claimed in an op-ed for the Washington Post on Wednesday that President Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr are leaving a “legacy of damage” to the Justice Department.
“The Justice Department was damaged when the attorney general and the president lied to the American people about the work of the special counsel investigating the president,” Comey wrote, referring to former special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
Comey then claimed that Trump and Barr damaged the DOJ again when Barr “intervened in a case involving the president’s friend Roger Stone to overrule the sentencing recommendation of career prosecutors.”
Comey was referring to Barr’s recommendation that the DOJ lessen Stone’s sentence, since the judge presiding over Stone’s case was clearly biased.
Trump ultimately commuted Stone’s sentence entirely, as it was within his constitutionally vested authority to do.
Another example Comey cited was when Barr dropped the case against former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who had been set up by FBI agents interviewing him, according to recently declassified documents.
Declassified documents have indicated that Comey may have been personally overseeing the deceptive perjury trap against Flynn, shortly after he took over as Trump’s first national security adviser.
Comey discussed the matter with the out-going Obama officials, including the president and Vice President Joe Biden, on Jan. 5, 2007.
He is believed to have confirmed in that meeting that Flynn’s calls with a Russian ambassador were legitimate, but remained open to the possibility of using the antiquated Logan Act against Flynn.
Comey’s boss, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, confirmed in recent Senate testimony that he had gone rogue in the investigation against Flynn while keeping her in the dark on it.
Uncovered documents also prove that Comey and top intelligence officials involved in the Russia-Gate hoax knew that the so-called intel from the Steele Dossier—upon which their “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation was predicated—was highly questionable at best, and outright dishonest at worst.
But all of this, according to Comey, was evidence of corruption within the Trump ranks and not the “dirty cops” in his own intelligence community.
Comey—rumored to be facing potential criminal charges in the soon-to-wrap investigation led by special prosecutor John Durham— urged voters to choose a president who will “repair” the damage Trump has done to the DOJ.
“We need a president who will appoint an attorney general not because he needs a personal defense lawyer but because American justice needs a guardian,” Comey maintained.
“We need a president who has devoted his life to serving others through the rule of law,” he continued. “We need to elect Joe Biden.”
When asked over the weekend whether he believed he was a “target” in the Durham probe, Comey told CBS News: “I have no idea.”
Comey said he had not been contacted by Durham, and he coyly denied the possibility that his actions might have come under suspicion.
“I can’t imagine that I’m a target,” he claimed, while acknowledging that his CIA counterpart, John Brennan, had recently been called in to give a deposition.
“Given that I know what happened during 2016, which was a bunch of people trying to do the right thing consistent with the law, I’m not worried at all [about] that investigation of the investigation,” Comey said. “They just want to have an investigation to talk about.”
Liberty Headlines’ Ben Sellers contributed to this report.
