Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche details new indictment of James Comey

[0:00] We have breaking news right now. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanch there at the podium detailing a new indictment against former FBI Director James Comey. Let's listen in. [0:08] James Comey knowingly and willfully transmitting in interstate commerce, a communication that contained a threat to kill the president of the United States. Both of these counts carry a maximum term of imprisonment of 10 years. [0:22] So I think it's fair to say that threatening the life of anybody is dangerous and potentially a crime. [0:32] Threatening the life of the president of the United States will never be tolerated by the Department of Justice. [0:39] Over the past year, this department has charged dozens of cases involving threats against all sorts of individuals. [0:49] We take these seriously, every single one of them. [0:53] For example, just today in the Northern District of Florida, there was a guilty plea from an individual who threatened multiple political leaders, including President Trump. [1:05] In the Eastern District of North Carolina, where this case was indicted earlier today, there are multiple threats cases very similar to this one, [1:14] including one where the defendant pled guilty recently to threatening former President Biden, another one that's scheduled to go to trial this summer. [1:22] Another one indicted an individual was divided was indicted for threatening Tom Homan. [1:28] I say that to say that while this case is unique and this indictment stands out because of the name of the defendant, his alleged conduct is the same kind of conduct that we will never tolerate and that we will always investigate and regularly prosecute. [1:46] I want to take a moment to thank the hardworking members of the FBI who investigated this case over the past 11 months or so, the United States Secret Service who also assisted in this investigation and the United States Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina led by United States Attorney Ellis Boyle, who's standing to my right. [2:09] This was an investigation that remains ongoing. That's been ongoing for about a year. And that's all we're going to say about it today. I will let the U.S. Attorney Boyle speak now and then after that, Director Patel. Thank you. [2:26] Thank you, Mr. Attorney General. Earlier today, a grand jury in the Eastern District of North Carolina returned a true bill, [2:40] and dining Mr. James Comey with committing two felonies. Count one, he knowingly and willfully made a threat to kill and to inflict bodily harm upon the President of the United States in violation of 18 U.S.C. 871A. [2:59] Count two, he knowingly and willfully transmitted an interstate and foreign commerce, [3:06] a communication that contained a threat to kill President Trump in violation of 18 U.S.C. 875C. [3:18] Mr. Comey will be given every form of due process all citizens are entitled to receive to include a trial by a jury of his peers. [3:30] In the Eastern District of North Carolina, it doesn't matter who you are. We take all threat cases seriously and prosecute anyone who violates federal law, regardless of title or status. Thank you. [3:48] Thank you. As you heard from the Attorney General and the U.S. Attorney, former FBI Director James Comey has now been indicted for two felony counts. [3:59] While many of you may read this indictment and view this matter as a simple investigation, it is the farthest thing from that. [4:05] Every single investigation this FBI and our partners at the Department of Justice undertake, especially those that involve the threats to harm or hurt or even kill individuals, [4:14] whether they behold public office or civilians in our country, are met with the same measure of investigative prowess and tools and personnel in partnership with the Department of Justice as anyone else. [4:24] As the U.S. Attorney indicated, James Comey will be afforded every matter of due process under the United States Constitution. [4:31] And as the Attorney General indicated, this has been a case that's been investigated over the past 9, 10, 11 months. [4:37] These cases take time. Our investigators work methodically. They are career agents, career prosecutors who work these matters. [4:45] They call the balls and strikes in the field as they see fit pursuant to the facts of the case in the law. [4:50] They took that information and made a presentment to a grand jury, a jury of appears in the district in which the alleged crime took place. [4:57] And that grand jury spoke and that grand jury returned a two count indictment against James Comey. [5:03] James Comey allegedly threatened the life of the president of the United States. [5:08] And as you all now know, shortly after posting that threat, he deleted that threat and then issued an apology. [5:16] All of that information was presented to the grand jury and Mr. Comey will have his day in court and his ability to speak to a jury of his peers. [5:25] Thank you. Thank you. We'll just take a couple of questions. [5:31] Mr. Attorney General, the Justice Department in this filing today also issued an arrest warrant for Mr. Comey. [5:39] Is it your belief that he is a continued public threat? And is there a request also for detention that you anticipate will be made in this case? [5:51] So the Department of Justice does not issue arrest warrants. Grand juries do. [5:55] And so the grand jury returned an indictment and arrest warrant. I expect that there will be communication with with Mr. Comey's counsel and we'll go from there. [6:05] This case will proceed like hundreds of others do every year. There will be some sort of arraignment set by the judge or assigned to the magistrate judge. [6:15] And when that happens, you'll you'll know about it. [6:18] This is being handled differently from the last time he was indicted. That's my reference. In this case, the department requested an arrest warrant, right? [6:28] Well, I don't think that it's public or clear what the department requested. The grand jury issued an arrest warrant. Go ahead. Yes. [6:36] Sir, how will you prove intent when, as the director had acknowledged, Mr. Comey said he did not associate 86 with doing harm and he took it down promptly, said it was political speech, not an intent to harm the president? [6:51] Well, it's not. It's not. This case was indicted today. This conduct occurred about a year ago, May 15th of last year. There's been a tremendous amount of investigation. And how do you prove intent in any case? [7:05] You prove intent with witnesses, with documents, with the defendant himself to the extent to the extent it's appropriate. And that's how we'll improve intent in this case. [7:14] And so I think that talking about what Mr. Comey will or will not do if there's a trial, when there's a trial, it's not as very premature for me to do that today. [7:25] General Blanche, I want to ask you a quick question about there's a number of other different types of conduct Comey has been accused of over the past. [7:34] One of them is abuse of FISA warrants. I wanted to ask if there's anything that we could talk about today in regards to that. But on a separate matter, if I may ask any more updates about the ballistics forensics analysis with the shooting that happened over the weekend. [7:48] So on the first question, no, there's nothing else to report about any investigations or anything involving Mr. Comey except the indictment that was returned today by the grand jury. [7:57] I don't have anything further to talk about with the ballistics that are still being analyzed. And I said it yesterday. And every law enforcement member who is speaking on this issue is saying the same thing as they should, which is that this is an ongoing investigation with really, really smart experts trying to understand what happened in that shooting and where the bullets went and ended up and where the bullets came from. [8:21] And once that is at a place where we can definitively say, to the extent we can definitively say, we will let you know. [8:28] Director Comey posted this almost a year ago. Why bring this case now? Did you always feel like this was a strong prosecution or did something change recently? [8:36] This this investigation just didn't come now. It's the result of a lot of work by law enforcement over the past year. We don't time when we bring when we bring cases around anything other than when the investigation is at a place where we should go to the grand jury. And that's exactly what we did in this case as well. [8:56] As a former FBI director, you may not agree with what he did. Should he be able to turn himself in as a former FBI director? He's not a flight risk. [9:03] I didn't say he can't turn himself in. So he's not under arrest right now and he may be able to work out something. I don't know whether he's under arrest right now. I'm here talking to you. The grand jury issued an arrest warrant. I think that the way that this happens is different in every case. It's fact intensive. It depends on who you're right, who the defendant is. It depends on whether he has counsel. It depends on what the judge wants done. [9:25] And so I don't I don't know when the judge will schedule a an initial arraignment, if that will be scheduled by the magistrate or the district court judge. I am sure. I don't know if you want to speak to that or if it's just something that will come up in the next coming days. You'll know when it happens. As far as what Mr. Comey does between now and then, I'm going to leave that up to the line prosecutors in the Eastern District of North Carolina, the FBI agents and the work that they're doing. [9:50] I want to explain why Director Patel, maybe you said that it's a complicated thing. A lot of people might think it's an easy case. Why did it take so long? I know that you guys chose to go with this now. But to the layman just looking at this case or layperson looking at the case, it was an Instagram post. He apologized. Why did it take so long? [10:08] Well, I'm not going to get into the details of the investigation itself. But a lot of these cases, you could look at when the threats were made and when charges are brought. They're not easy cases. And so we have to. There's a communication that's sent in allegedly in this case. [10:23] And so that means that we have to look at devices. Mr. Comey is a lawyer. He has lawyers. So the extent that we're looking at materials that are potentially privileged, we have to get a wall and set up a wall and let totally independent lawyers look at those. And so that doesn't happen overnight or quickly. And the satchel limitations of this is five years. We brought it in under one year. So that's really where we're at. [10:47] Mr. It's clear that you don't want to talk specifics today. But to the American public, can you at least give us a sense of whether you have hard evidence or evidence that shows that Mr. Comey intended for President Trump to be harmed? And then secondarily, for critics who say, where does free speech end and an actual threat of violence begin? [11:12] Mr. I don't know what critics say that, especially today. But it's not a very difficult line to look at. And it's not, in my mind, a difficult line for one to cross over one way or the other. [11:25] We cannot. You are not allowed to threaten the president of the United States of America. That's not my decision. That's Congress's decision in a statute that they passed that we charge multiple times a year. [11:36] And so whether whether there is a defense, as you just described, maybe, maybe there is. But but the government will have evidence. I am not going to talk about the evidence that we have. That's unfair to him. It's unfair to the prosecutors. [11:49] But it's enough to say that the grand jury returned returned an indictment. I'm just take one more question. Thank you, sir. Mary Margaret with the Daily Wire. Should we expect more indictments of this sort? For example, in 2020, Gretchen Whitmer did a TV hit with 8645 on her desk in the background. Is that the kind of thing you would pursue? And then just really quickly, should Comey expect to face more charges for his role in the Russia collusion investigations? [12:13] I'm not going to comment on other investigations involving Mr. Comey. There's he had he was indicted in the East District of Virginia. That was dismissed on procedural grounds because of the the judges finding regarding the U.S. attorney. So that's cases under appeal. As far as other investigations that are happening, it would not be appropriate or fair for me to comment on that time. As far as other instances of threats against the president of the United States, those will be investigated. Every case is different. The facts are different. [12:41] Who makes the threat matters. What the threat says matters. You're right. The question about intent matters. And we have to prove that. That's something that's our job. And that's something that prosecutors will have to do in front of a jury at the right time. But you cannot compare. It's not fair to the American people. It's not fair to the defendant. And it's certainly not fair to the prosecutors to compare, well, if you did it here, why didn't you do it there? Every case is different. [13:07] But there's one thing that will never be different, which is that you cannot threaten to kill the president of the United States. Full stop. All right. Thanks a lot, guys. [13:15] Did President Trump's message to Pam Bondi. We've been watching acting attorney general there, Todd Blanche, discussing the indictment against former FBI director James Comey, a federal grand jury in North Carolina earlier today, indicted the former FBI director over an Instagram post from last year. [13:40] That President Trump and members of his administration believe was a threat. For more on this, I want to bring in ABC's Washington, D.C. Bureau managing editor Catherine Falgers and former federal prosecutor Nima Rahmani for more. [13:53] Catherine, this is going to be a challenging case, I would imagine. Have we ever seen anything like this? A federal indictment over an Instagram post picture displaying seashells? [14:08] Well, Todd Blanche opened his press conference trying to equate what was happening here to other cases that had been indicted or other guilty pleas in other districts across the country here. [14:19] But no, I don't believe we've ever seen a case like this, especially of the former FBI director who had already been indicted. Those charges are thrown out on a different matter. [14:31] And now this. Now, the question was, and this was asked by many reporters in the room there, how are they going to prove intent? [14:38] They kept saying the officials there that he unknowingly and willfully posted this on Instagram with the intention of threatening the life of President Trump. [14:50] Now, the indictment is only three pages long and only references the Instagram post. [14:54] Now, of course, it is an active investigation, according to Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general. [14:59] But the question is, what evidence did they come about in this nearly one year after Comey posted this and then deleted it? [15:08] And it's important to point out that Comey posted this online. There was backlash associated with it. [15:14] President Trump supporters and others said that this was threatening President Trump. [15:19] Comey deleted that. And he said that he didn't know that there was any violent meaning to it. [15:24] And he apologized for that. So how are prosecutors going to prove that he intended to threaten the life of President Trump by posting that online when Comey immediately took it down and said that was not his intent? [15:38] So there's a lot of questions there, of course. And this was indicted in North Carolina on in that district where those seashells were assembled on the beach. [15:48] And Comey, he says he did not assemble those seashells. He came about it, took the photo and posted it on Instagram. [15:54] And Catherine, has Comey commented on this? Has he said anything since the indictment? [16:01] I don't believe that Comey has commented yet on this. I can imagine that his lawyers wanted to see the indictment, those charges that were just recently unsealed. [16:10] And, of course, I'm sure they wanted to hear from the acting attorney general to see what he would have to say. [16:17] But I will say that when Comey was last indicted and the charges were thrown out, Comey did say a couple months back that he believed that this administration would go after him again. [16:28] Now, for what? Comey didn't say. But we had known that this had been an investigation in North Carolina. [16:33] So it was certainly something that was on the Department of Justice's radar, at least, for a future indictment. [16:39] And Nima, we know that President Trump has long pressed for his political adversaries to face charges. [16:46] This photo, as we've been talking about it for quite a bit now, was posted last year. [16:52] We heard from the AG there, Todd Blanche, saying that it took time to put this case together. [16:57] Is that typical for them to mention or say that this was a threat, a photo that was posted last year, and then bring on these charges a year later? [17:09] Definitely. It's not typical, but this is not a typical case. [17:12] And that's why it's so incredibly weak. [17:14] I mean, there are so many legal hurdles that the Department of Justice has to overcome, even to get to a jury trial. [17:20] And I don't think they will. [17:22] And even if they get there, this will probably be a quick, either hung jury or not guilty. [17:26] Obviously, there's the First Amendment issue. [17:29] There is the ambiguity of the 86 itself. [17:33] There's the intent that Catherine and Blanche talked about. [17:37] You've got to prove that. [17:39] Obviously, we know that Comey has a selective or vindictive prosecution defense. [17:44] So that's another one. [17:45] And then we know how polarizing Comey is. [17:49] Obviously, the president is. [17:50] It's going to be very difficult to get 12 out of 12 jurors to agree on anything, much less a highly politicized case like this. [17:57] And, of course, Comey is going to fight this tooth and nail. [17:59] We saw him fight the previous indictment and get that dismissed. [18:03] So this is someone who's sophisticated. [18:04] He has the means. [18:05] So I have serious concerns if I were on the front lines and the assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting this case that I want to get it dismissed. [18:14] But even if I don't, just because you got a grand jury indictment doesn't mean you're going to be able to get a unanimous jury verdict in a case like this. [18:22] So there are many weaknesses. [18:24] I don't know, frankly, what's been done in the past year except Bondi being forced out. [18:29] And now you have Blanche moving this case forward, a dubious, questionable one as well, both on the facts and the law. [18:36] And Nima, we heard our peer Thomas, our justice correspondent there in the room asking questions there to the AG. [18:44] And you talked about intent and having hard evidence proving that Comey was threatening the president. [18:52] What type of evidence do you think they may have or may be still looking for to prove that Comey was threatening the president? [19:01] I think if they had it, we would have heard it. [19:04] All I heard were really conclusory statements by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. [19:09] Look, there might be some smoking gun that I don't know about, some independent witness, some email, some direct message, text message where Comey is making this threat. [19:20] And, of course, if that exists, then this is a very different type of case. [19:24] And absolutely, he should be prosecuted. [19:26] But, again, I don't think someone who's served in the highest roles of the Department of Justice, FBI director, Department of Justice, main justice, would be stupid enough to make that kind of threat. [19:37] But, again, what I see is a political message, a protected one. [19:41] I see 86 having multiple meanings, not, again, eliminating the president that the attorney general says that it is or acting attorney general. [19:51] So, absent some incredibly stupid and foolish statement or message by Comey, I think this case is dead in the water. [20:01] And I don't care if it's a Trump-appointed federal judge, Biden, Obama, you name it. [20:06] This case will likely be dismissed. [20:08] And, again, I predict that it will be another loss for the DOJ and an embarrassing one at that. [20:15] And, Catherine, we know the indictment has been filed in the Eastern District of North Carolina. [20:19] But what happens next? [20:20] And I know this was a question that was raised in the briefing room there. [20:24] Will Comey be arrested? [20:26] Was there an arrest warrant filed? [20:29] Do we know at this point what comes next? [20:31] There is a warrant on the docket for Comey's arrest. [20:35] I can imagine that what will happen here, in theory, is that his lawyers will be in touch with the Department of Justice. [20:43] Comey will turn himself in, if you will, and go through the motions that way. [20:49] There were questions about whether DOJ wants him to be held if they think he's an ongoing threat. [20:56] They didn't seem to really answer that. [20:58] However, this was a post that has been on the Internet for nearly a year. [21:02] So it doesn't seem that he would be an ongoing threat in DOJ's mind. [21:08] But, again, they didn't answer that. [21:10] So we'll likely see some procedural moves in that way. [21:13] Now, you mentioned this is the Eastern District of North Carolina. [21:16] The judge will schedule an arraignment, an initial appearance, and then go from there. [21:21] And they'll go through the motions that way. [21:24] I can imagine that Comey's lawyers will file a number of motions to have this tossed out. [21:30] And, you know, it's unlikely, in my view. [21:33] Who knows? [21:34] As we've discussed, there could be some smoking gun. [21:36] But I'm not so sure that this will make it to a jury trial. [21:39] So there will be lots of motions, hearings. [21:40] I can imagine Comey's lawyers will file a motion claiming that DOJ is vindictively bringing this prosecution. [21:47] We'll likely see that. [21:48] So there will be lots of maneuvering through the courts coming up. [21:52] Certainly will be. [21:53] And, Nima, you're a former federal prosecutor. [21:55] Have you ever seen anything like this? [21:58] Any similar cases in your experience? [22:01] I haven't seen it, Stephanie. [22:03] Look, I'm not naive, obviously. [22:05] I understand that there are many people that don't like Comey, both on the left and the right. [22:09] Obviously, Democrats for how he handled the Hillary Clinton emails and injecting himself into a presidential election. [22:17] And, of course, the president because of Russiagate. [22:21] But really, you know, again, I was hired by a Bush U.S. attorney. [22:26] I stayed on for an Obama one. [22:27] I mean, back in my day, there was a line between law and politics. [22:32] And that line seems to be completely blurred right now. [22:36] I mean, we live in a country where we really shouldn't be going after our political adversaries. [22:40] I understand that the president believes that he was treated unfairly by the Biden Department of Justice. [22:46] And this might be some sort of retribution. [22:48] But my concern, Stephanie and Catherine, frankly, is now we've really opened a political Pandora's box that can't be closed where the DOJ is being used for these partisan reasons. [22:59] And that's not the purpose. [23:00] It's there to protect the American people, not go after adversaries like this. [23:06] Nima and Catherine, thank you very much for your time and for sticking around for this.