Todd Blanche says case against Comey based on more than just Instagram post | James Comey
Acting U.S. attorney Todd Blanche on Sunday defended new charges against former FBI director James Comey, insisting the case is based on more than an Instagram post from last year.
The Ministry of Justice made a statement indictment for two separate crimes A lawsuit was filed against Comey on Tuesday, accusing him of a photo he shared on Instagram last May.
In the picture, seashells arranged in the shape of “86 47” were seen on the beach. 86 is short for getting rid of something, and Trump’s allies accused Comey of threatening violence against the president.
Comey deleted the post, apologized and condemned the violence, saying he did not know what the statement meant. Comey has said he is innocent and has denied any wrongdoing.
Trump has long viewed Comey as a political foe and frequently belittled him on social media. legal expertsto contain conservative alliesThey greeted the new charges with skepticism, viewing it as a thinly veiled effort to punish one of Trump’s political rivals (an earlier criminal case against Comey in Virginia was dismissed last year).
But Blanche insisted on Sunday there was more to it.
“Make sure it’s not just the Instagram post that gets someone charged,” Blanche said. during an interview Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press. “You prove the intention with witnesses, you prove your intention with documents and materials.” When pressed by host Kristen Welker about what additional evidence there might be, Blanche refused to provide any evidence.
“At the hearing, which will be open to the public, everyone in this country will know exactly what evidence the government has against Mr. Comey,” he said.
Blanche is said to be seeking a permanent appointment as attorney general and has been aggressively pushing forward with cases targeting Trump’s political rivals in just a month since succeeding Pam Bondi as attorney general.
Thom Tillis, a Republican senator from North Carolina, said the justice department must present evidence beyond the picture to prove the case has merit.
“If this whole case is based on a photo in the sand of a beach in North Carolina, again, it doesn’t make any sense to me,” he said during an interview on CNN. State of the Union on Sunday. “There better be more than just the picture. There must be facts and circumstances beyond that to convince me.”
Throughout the interview, Blanche also said that professional prosecutors and law enforcement officials are investigating the case. However, experienced lawyers dropped the case earlier during the investigation. Bloomberg Law reported.
The prosecutor prosecuting the case is a former New Jersey city councilman from New Jersey whose primary prosecutorial experience was in Medicaid fraud cases. W Ellis Boyle, the acting U.S. attorney for the eastern district of North Carolina who is overseeing the case, was not a prosecutor before being appointed to his current position last year, according to Bloomberg Law.
Adam Schiff, the Democratic senator from California who is also a target of Trump, said Sunday that he had never seen such a weak case.
“I think this case will probably be dismissed before it goes to the jury,” he said in an interview with NBC. Meet the Press. “It will certainly be rejected by the jury.”
