Newly free from criminal indictment by the Trump administration that he said was “based on malevolence and incompetence,” former FBI director James Comey celebrated his victory on Monday with tempered expectations for the future.
“I know that Donald Trump will probably come after me again, and my attitude’s gonna be the same: I am innocent, I am not afraid and I believe in an independent federal judiciary, the gift from our Founders that protects us from a would-be tyrant,” Comey said in a video shared to Instagram.
As HuffPost reported, a federal judge dismissed the two-count indictment against Comey — as well as a separate indictment against New York Attorney General Letitia James — after finding that Lindsey Halligan, the prosecutor President Donald Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi tapped to lead the cases, was unlawfully appointed as the interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.
The indictments were dismissed without prejudice, which means that charges can be refiled. But that would take some fancy footwork on behalf of the Justice Department: When it comes to Comey, the statute of limitations for the alleged offenses has run out.
The former FBI director was charged in September — just days after Trump publicly called on Bondi to indict him — with one count of making false statements and one count of obstruction of justice. The Justice Department alleged that Comey lied to congressional investigators in 2020 about whether he authorized someone at the FBI to be an anonymous source to reporters about law enforcement probes of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russian interference in the 2016 election.
