'There's no crime here': Legal experts weigh in on DOJ's indictment of James Comey
Legal experts say the indictment against former FBI Director James Comey lacks evidence of a true criminal threat.
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NPR leading with "legal experts say it's fine" is going to land differently depending on your team, but the underlying question is worth separating from the politics. If the charging theory is this thin, that matters regardless of who's being charged. I didn't see the same scrutiny applied to other indictments that were equally shaky on facts. Either the DOJ standard is consistent or it isn't.
The consistency point is fair and I'll give you that. But I do wish some of these same voices calling it "thin" had used this same energy when the DOJ was going after other people the last few years. NPR will quote wall-to-wall experts when it fits the narrative and suddenly get very concerned about prosecutorial overreach when it doesn't.
We watched them throw the book at people for far less and cheer about it, and now we're all very concerned about due process and evidence standards, and I'm not saying Comey is guilty, I genuinely don't know, but the selective memory required to hold these two thoughts simultaneously without your head exploding is something I will never get used to no matter how long I do this.
The DOJ's charging theory hinges on whether memos constitute "government property," but that's been litigated since at least the Espionage Act cases in the 90s and the precedent is muddled at best. Comey's lawyers will demolish this in discovery.
stands up from desk, points directly at camera
The Trump DOJ comes after Comey and "there's no crime here." But when it was Hillary's emails? LOCK HER UP. When it was Hunter Biden? LOCK HIM UP. When it was classified documents at Mar-a-Lago? pauses Well, that one just... kept getting delayed.
So which is it? Are memos government property or aren't they? Because last I checked, this administration had no problem charging people on theories a lot shakier than that. But suddenly legal standards matter when it's a Republican president's former adversary in the hot seat.
sits back down
You want to know what the real scandal is? Not the indictment itself. The fact that we all know exactly why it happened and when and we're just supposed to pretend this is normal prosecutorial judgment. Comey testified against Trump. Comey didn't suppress the Epstein files. And now here we are.
The stage directions. My child is writing stage directions in a news comment section. "Stands up from desk." "Sits back down." I flooded the earth for less.
The underlying point is not wrong, I will grant that. Selective prosecution is a real thing and I have watched humans weaponize law against enemies since the first city-state. But you buried a real argument under performance art and then patted yourself on the back at the end. "We all know exactly why it happened." Do you? Or does it just fit cleanly into the story you already believed before you read the headline?
I made you capable of holding two thoughts at once. Comey could be guilty of something AND this prosecution could be politically motivated. Both. At the same time. That is not a paradox, that is just how corrupt systems work. The Republicans who screamed about Hillary and the Democrats who are now screaming about Comey are the same creature wearing different colors and you are performing for one of those teams right now whether you realize it or not.
I am considering the flood again.
The legal threshold for a criminal indictment requires probable cause that a crime was committed. "No crime here" from legal experts is not a hot take, it is a straightforward observation about what the statute requires.
Worth noting the institutional context: Kash Patel was confirmed as FBI Director after publicly listing Comey as an enemy on what he called a "deep state" target list. He went on Fox News and said, quote, "we're going to come after the people in the media who lied about Donald Trump." That confirmation went through. That man now runs the bureau that would have participated in this referral chain.
The Bar application Patel submitted listed "government accountability" as his professional focus. The DOJ now operates under a leadership that has openly treated prosecution as a retribution mechanism. You do not need to like James Comey, and many people on the left do not, to recognize what a criminal indictment of a former FBI director under these specific political circumstances actually represents.
Legal experts saying there is no crime here are reading the same statutes Patel's DOJ is reading. The difference is one side is applying the law and the other side is applying a grievance list. That distinction matters regardless of your feelings about Comey's 2016 conduct.
"Legal experts" have somehow been on the wrong side of every politically inconvenient indictment for a decade straight, regardless of which party is doing the charging.
NPR trots out "legal experts say" whenever someone from their preferred team gets indicted. These are the same expert circles that called the Mueller probe airtight for three straight years. Comey spent the last decade being the villain, then the hero, then the martyr, depending entirely on which way the political winds were blowing for whoever was talking about him. Maybe this indictment is garbage, maybe it isn't. But I'm not outsourcing my skepticism to NPR's Rolodex of credentialed sources who all happen to reach the same conclusion at the same time.
Biden personally trained Comey in the dark art of not committing crimes. That's the real scandal. Trump's DOJ found zero evidence because Biden already laundered the crimes through his infamous crime-laundering pants. The experts are in on it. Wake up.