Civil Discourse – A Note About the Comey Case – Joyce Vance

Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance

A Note About the Comey Case

By Joyce Vance, Oct 02, 2025

In the wake of the Comey indictment, The Washington Post is reporting tonight that “Lawyers inside the high-profile U.S. attorney’s office [for the Eastern District of Virginia] prosecuting former FBI director James B. Comey are unnerved by what they see as an unprecedented push by President Donald Trump to inject politics into their staffing and charging decisions … a strategy they say could jeopardize national security investigations.” Two longtime prosecutors in the office were fired within days after Erik Siebert, the Trump nominee to be U.S. attorney who declined to indict Comey because the evidence wasn’t there, was replaced by Trump loyalist Lindsey Halligan. Halligan, a former insurance lawyer, has no prosecutorial experience.

The two prosecutors who were fired are:

• Maya D. Song, the former U.S. attorney’s first assistant, the second in command for the U.S. attorney. She was first demoted and then fired.
• Michael P. Ben’Ary, the chief of the office’s national security unit.

Both, it turns out, seem to have been targeted because of their association with Lisa Monaco, the deputy attorney general during the Biden administration, who served as the head of DOJ’s National Security Division during part of the Obama administration. That’s how petty this is. And it’s also dangerous. The Eastern District of Virginia plays an outsized role when it comes to terrorism investigations and prosecutions. One out of every five terrorism prosecutions have been filed in Eastern Virginia since DOJ started tracking these crimes in fiscal year 1995. Firing people with expertise and institutional knowledge in this area makes no sense. It’s pure appeasement for Trump and his allies on social media who attack people they view as political enemies and demand that they be canceled.

In the days following the indictment, there were additional revelations about the charges against Comey. That’s unusual. Normally, you read an indictment and you know up front what the defendant is being charged with. In fact, the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure require the indictment to be a plain statement of the crime or crimes, and due process prohibits trial by surprise.

For the first 24 hours after the indictment became public, there was a widespread assumption that the false statement the government accused former FBI Director of making involved Andy McCabe, his number two at the Bureau, and whether he’d authorized him to be an anonymous source. Then came reporting that McCabe was never interviewed by prosecutors during the investigation and didn’t testify before the grand jury. Subsequently, there was reporting that the indictment involves a different individual named Daniel Richman, a friend of Comey’s who is a professor at Columbia Law School.

When I first wrote to you about the indictment, we noted that Comey’s lawyers would likely ask for a bill of particulars, a request that the judge force the government to specify the details underlying an indictment that is vague or deficient. This one certainly seems to be.

I wrote about the problems with the indictment for the Brennan Center in a piece out today, which I hope you’ll take a look at after you finish up here! I wrote, “Halligan may have obtained the indictment the president wanted, but it reflects the flawed process that produced it. Grand jurors rejected one count in the proposed indictment, reportedly involving an additional false statement, which happens very rarely. It’s not a good sign for the strength of the government’s evidence. It’s one thing to get a grand jury to indict. Getting a conviction is an entirely different matter.” A lot is going on in this case, and the utter irregularity and disregard for the rule of law the president is directing the Justice Department to act with, combined with a complicit attorney general, is something we cannot afford to lose sight of.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: A Note About the Comey Case