Former FBI director James Comey charged two accusations

A great federal jury of the US state of Virginia charged the former director of the FBI James Comey for two accusations linked to his testimony to the Congress.

Comey, who has long attracted the criticism of US President Donald Trump, is accused of lying to the congress during his testimony in September 2020 as to whether he authorized the leak of classified information to the media.

Responding to the indictment, Comey declared himself innocent and said that he had “great confidence in the federal judicial system”.

The indictment comes a few days after Trump called the highest official of the application of the country’s laws, the Attorney General Pam Bondi, to investigate his political adversaries, including Mr. Comey.

The investigation is led by Lindsey Halligan, the American lawyer for the Oriental District of Virginia, who was previously Trump’s personal lawyer and took control of his new role on Monday.

The accusation of Mr. Comey – where the accusations are officially read before an accused in court – was set for the morning of October 9 in Alexandria, Virginia, at 10:00 am local time (2:00 p.m. GMT), reports the US BBC CBS.

Bondi declared in a statement that the indictment “reflects the commitment of this Ministry of Justice to hold those who abuse positions of power responsible for having deceived the American people”.

Comey was charged with a charm of false declarations and another obstruction of justice.

The false alleged statements relate to a senator from the senate judicial committee that he had not “authorized someone else to the FBI to be an anonymous source in reports” concerning an FBI investigation, presumed to be the investigation of the question of whether Russia has mixed the 2016 elections.

The second chief of obstruction alleges that Mr. Comey “tried to corrupt to influence, hindered and hindered the exercise due and appropriate the power of investigation under which an investigation was presented before the Senate judicial committee by making false and misleading statements” before this committee.

The Ministry of Justice asked the Grand Jury to examine three accusations against Mr. Comey, but it could only be agreed by two of them were supported by sufficient evidence to be tried in court.

The third account was another accusation of making false statements.

A large jury is a group of citizens set up by a prosecutor to determine if there is enough evidence for charges to be deposited. In legal terms, it determines whether a probable cause exists that a crime has been committed.

Mr. Comey is the first former director of the FBI to be charged for a crime, and he argues that he did not lie under oath.

If he is found guilty, he could incur up to five years in prison.

A lawyer for Mr. Comey, Patrick Fitzgerald, published a short stay by saying that his client had denied the accusations, adding: “We are impatient to justify him in the courtroom.”

Comey said in a separate video statement: “My family and I have known for years that there are costs to resist Donald Trump.”

“We will not live on his knees, and you should not either,” he continued, adding: “And I am innocent. So let’s do a trial.”

The accusations were deposited shortly before the expiration of the limitation period over five years.

The case had recently been given to a new prosecutor after Erik Seibert, the American lawyer supervising the case, was dismissed by the Trump administration. He was replaced by Ms. Halligan.

According to the accusation documents, Mr. Comey “voluntarily and knowingly made a strongly false, fictitious and fraudulent declaration … by wrongly declaring to an American senator” that he had not “authorized someone else to the FBI to be an anonymous source in the reports”.

The prosecutors say that the declaration was false because Mr. Comey had ordered an anonymous person to serve as an anonymous source in reports concerning an FBI investigation concerning “another anonymous person.

Around September 30, 2020, the document said, Mr. Comey “tried to corrupt to influence, hindered and hindered the exercise due and appropriate the power of the investigation” of the US Senate judicial committee by “false and deceptive declarations”.

The case is considered the most important acts of accusation of a public figure during Trump’s second term.

Trump recently expressed his frustration that the prosecution of his public criticisms such as Mr. Comey, Senator Adam Schiff and the Prosecutor General of New York, Leticia James, take so much time.

“We can no longer delay, it kills our reputation and our credibility. They dismissed me twice and charged me (5 times!), On nothing. Justice must be done, now !!!” Trump said on Truth Social last week.

After the accusation, Trump described Mr. Comey as “one of the worst human beings to which this country has ever been exposed”.

“It has been so bad for our country, for so long, and is now at the start of being held responsible for its crimes against our nation. Make America great again!”

Asked about Mr. Comey a few hours before the indictment was not sealed, Trump called him a “bad person” but said that he had no advanced knowledge of his prosecution.

Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor and professor of law at the University of Loyola Marymount, said that it would be a very difficult case to continue.

“It is often the word of the accused against someone else and you will have to look at the credibility of the two,” she told BBC News.

“And even if James Comey was wrong, it does not mean that he knowingly or intentionally lied to the congress. So, proving that it will be the heart of the case.”

Levenson also said that this prosecution and public pressure from Trump to move forward suggest that the traditional firewall between the White House and the US Ministry of Justice had “collapsed with this case”.

Several Democrats have condemned the accusations, the Democratic leader of the Hakeem Jeffries Chamber denouncing them as “a shameful attack on the rule of law”, and promising the “responsibility” of “anyone accomplice of this malignant corruption”.

Mr. Comey was director of the FBI between 2013 and 2017.

He had a tumultuous mandate which included supervising the highly publicized investigation into the email of the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton a few weeks before the 2016 elections, which she lost against Trump.

He was dismissed by Trump in the midst of an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 elections.

This is not the first survey on the former FBI boss to be launched this year.

He was the subject of an investigation by the secret services after sharing, then deleted a post of social shells spent the figures “8647”, which, according to the Republicans, was an incentive to violence against the American president Donald Trump.

Number 86 is a slang term whose definitions include “reject” or “get rid of”, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, which also notes that it was more recently used as a term meaning “killing”, while Trump is the 47th American president.

In July, Mr. Comey’s daughter, Maurene Comey, was dismissed from her role as federal prosecutor in the South New York district. She did not have the reason to be withdrawn from the office where she worked for 10 years, according to the media.

Earlier this month, she continued the Trump administration for her dismissal.

The Ministry of Justice dismissed lawyers who worked on cases that have made the president angry, including a special survey of the prosecutor on Trump.

Additional reports by Sumi Somaskanda