{"id":136466,"date":"2025-11-06T15:25:20","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T23:25:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/11\/06\/comey-prosecution-gets-the-benchslap-treatment-because-of-course\/"},"modified":"2025-11-06T15:25:20","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T23:25:20","slug":"comey-prosecution-gets-the-benchslap-treatment-because-of-course","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/11\/06\/comey-prosecution-gets-the-benchslap-treatment-because-of-course\/","title":{"rendered":"Comey Prosecution Gets The Benchslap Treatment, Because Of Course"},"content":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0indictment of former FBI Director James Comey<\/a>\u00a0is deeply problematic. Career prosecutors didn\u2019t want to touch it with a 10-foot pole but Comey is a political enemy of the president of the United States, so here we are. The\u00a0barebones indictment<\/a> is conclusory at best, alleging Comey lied to Congress in 2020, and is is so vague that it could apply to two alternate theories of the case.<\/p>\n

The entire prosecution, led by Trump flunky Lindsey Halligan, who I\u2019d refer to as deeply unserious if she didn\u2019t wield so much undeserved power, has been objectively embarrassing<\/a> for the government. And it\u2019s gotten worse.<\/p>\n

Yesterday in the case there was a hearing in front of Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick over potentially privileged materials collected in four different search warrants. And, he was *not* impressed. The defense raised concerns that the materials collected 5+ years ago were stale. As reported by<\/a> ABC News:<\/p>\n

\n

Judge Fitzpatrick appeared to agree with those concerns during Wednesday\u2019s hearing, as he repeatedly pressed Assistant U.S. Attorney Tyler Lemons over what materials the government had reviewed and why the disputes over privilege were not settled during the more than five years that the government had those communications in its possession<\/p>\n

Fitzpatrick, citing what he described as \u201cunusual\u201d behavior by the Justice Department and the quickly approaching January trial date, ordered the government to hand over \u201call grand jury materials\u201d related to its investigations of Comey by Thursday at 5 p.m. ET \u2014 an urgent deadline that reflected Fitzpatrick\u2019s concern over the government\u2019s conduct.<\/p>\n

Judge Fitzpatrick slammed the government\u2019s actions, saying it felt like an \u201cindict first, investigate second\u201d situation.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Well, to be fair to the DOJ, the judge\u2019s statement isn\u2019t quite accurate. You see the government *did* investigate \u2014 multiple times!<\/a> \u2014 and those prosecutors decided there wasn\u2019t enough evidence to indict but the president threw an inadvertently <\/a>public hissy hit about *not* prosecuting his political enemies and the statute of limitations was about to run out, so we\u2019re left with this blatant miscarriage of justice. But for simplicity\u2019s sake, criticizing the prosecution as \u201cindict first, investigate second\u201d gets the job done.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast<\/a>, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her<\/a> with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1<\/a>\u00a0or Mastodon @Kathryn1@mastodon.social.<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post Comey Prosecution Gets The Benchslap Treatment, Because Of Course<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJames Comey (Getty Images)\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The\u00a0indictment of former FBI Director James Comey<\/a>\u00a0is deeply problematic. Career prosecutors didn\u2019t want to touch it with a 10-foot pole but Comey is a political enemy of the president of the United States, so here we are. The\u00a0barebones indictment<\/a> is conclusory at best, alleging Comey lied to Congress in 2020, and is is so vague that it could apply to two alternate theories of the case.<\/p>\n

The entire prosecution, led by Trump flunky Lindsey Halligan, who I\u2019d refer to as deeply unserious if she didn\u2019t wield so much undeserved power, has been objectively embarrassing<\/a> for the government. And it\u2019s gotten worse.<\/p>\n

Yesterday in the case there was a hearing in front of Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick over potentially privileged materials collected in four different search warrants. And, he was *not* impressed. The defense raised concerns that the materials collected 5+ years ago were stale. As reported by<\/a> ABC News:<\/p>\n

\n

Judge Fitzpatrick appeared to agree with those concerns during Wednesday\u2019s hearing, as he repeatedly pressed Assistant U.S. Attorney Tyler Lemons over what materials the government had reviewed and why the disputes over privilege were not settled during the more than five years that the government had those communications in its possession<\/p>\n

Fitzpatrick, citing what he described as \u201cunusual\u201d behavior by the Justice Department and the quickly approaching January trial date, ordered the government to hand over \u201call grand jury materials\u201d related to its investigations of Comey by Thursday at 5 p.m. ET \u2014 an urgent deadline that reflected Fitzpatrick\u2019s concern over the government\u2019s conduct.<\/p>\n

Judge Fitzpatrick slammed the government\u2019s actions, saying it felt like an \u201cindict first, investigate second\u201d situation.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Well, to be fair to the DOJ, the judge\u2019s statement isn\u2019t quite accurate. You see the government *did* investigate \u2014 multiple times!<\/a> \u2014 and those prosecutors decided there wasn\u2019t enough evidence to indict but the president threw an inadvertently <\/a>public hissy hit about *not* prosecuting his political enemies and the statute of limitations was about to run out, so we\u2019re left with this blatant miscarriage of justice. But for simplicity\u2019s sake, criticizing the prosecution as \u201cindict first, investigate second\u201d gets the job done.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast<\/a>, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her<\/a> with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1<\/a>\u00a0or Mastodon @[email\u00a0protected].<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0indictment of former FBI Director James Comey\u00a0is deeply problematic. Career prosecutors didn\u2019t want to touch it with a 10-foot pole but Comey is a political enemy of the president of the United States, so here we are. The\u00a0barebones indictment is conclusory at best, alleging Comey lied to Congress in 2020, and is is so vague […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":136429,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-136466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xira.com\/p\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/IMG_5243-1-scaled-e1623338814705-620x568-1s33xH.jpg?fit=620%2C568&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136466\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}