Xinhua Agency, Beijing, October 9. Former FBI Director James Comey pleaded not guilty on the 8th to his case of making false statements to Congress. His defense lawyer claimed that Comey was accused of "retaliatory" and "selective" charges by the Trump administration and will seek court dismissal of the lawsuit.

A retaliatory lawsuit?

A large jury at the federal district court in eastern Virginia decided on September 25 to prosecute Comey on charges such as ¡°false statements¡± and ¡°interference with Congressional procedures.¡±The core allegations surround Comey¡¯s statements at a September 2020 Senate Justice Committee hearing, which focused on issues such as whether there was any misconduct in the FBI¡¯s ¡°Russia¡± investigation.

Comey was in charge of investigating whether the Trump campaign team conspired with Russia to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election, the ¡°Russian¡± investigation.

According to the Washington Post, at the 2020 hearing, a senator asked whether Komi had authorized "others in the FBI" to disclose Trump's "Russia-to-Russia" investigation and other related information to the news media as anonymous sources. Komi said at the time that he had never authorized the above behavior.

However, prosecutors determined that Komi's statement was false and that he actually authorized someone to leak relevant investigation information to the media. However, court documents did not disclose the identity of this key person.

Komi pleaded not guilty at a pretrial hearing on the 8th, but did not give a detailed speech. He said he would entrust a lawyer to defend himself. The judge arranged for Komi to appear in court on January 5 next year.

Patrick Fitzgerald, Comey¡¯s defense lawyer, said the lawsuit was a retaliatory move under President Trump¡¯s instructions, with allegations of abuse of power.

According to the Washington Post, in the past few years, Trump has repeatedly accused Comey of promoting the "Russia-wide" investigation against him. When he ran for president again last year, he vowed to hold relevant investigators accountable. The U.S. Department of Justice has launched criminal investigations against many people regarded as Trump's "political opponents."

Prosecutor controversy

Komi is the first former senior government official to be formally indicted by the Trump administration. His two charges are felonies, and once convicted, he will face up to five years in prison.

However, many members of the judiciary believe that the evidence in the case is insufficient to convict Comey.Many prosecutors in Comey¡¯s investigation have previously abandoned prosecution for lack of evidence.

Comey also intends to overturn the lawsuit on the grounds that the procedure for appointing prosecutor Lindsay Haligan in the case was unlawful.

According to the U.S. cable television news network reports, Haligan was an insurance lawyer before the politics, had a trial for Trump, then served as a White House assistant.The New York Times and other media said that Haligan was only appointed as an interim prosecutor of the eastern district of Virginia last month, before there was no prosecutor experience, only because the Comey case lawsuit will expire at the end of September, and the former interim prosecutor responsible for the case was pressured to resign due to the refusal to prosecute Comey, Haligan was "fast on the job".

When CNN reported on the Komi case on the 8th, it mentioned Harigan's statement in an interview with the conservative media Fox News Channel in 2022. At that time, the FBI under the Biden administration raided Trump's private home at Mar-a-Lago Estate in Florida, and Halligan was Trump's personal lawyer.

"It is the incumbent president's responsibility to ensure that our criminal system does not fall into retaliatory or political litigation against former presidents and other government officials," Halligan said in that interview. (Ocean)