← The Beat with Ari Melber
The Beat with Ari Melber
Fmr FBI Director James Comey Indicted on Two Counts
00:41:32
Former FBI Director James Comey has been indicted by a federal grand jury, just days after President Trump publicly called for it. MSNBC’s Ari Melber breaks down the legal implications with expert guests, including former Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann and Leslie Caldwell, former head of the DOJ’s Criminal Division.
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Ari Melber
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Ari Melber
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Ari Melber
Welcome to THE Beat. I'm Ari Melber and we are reporting as we end a week that has had some historic highs. The pushback and victory by free speech advocates for Jimmy Kimmel and last night's legal low by any nonpartisan standard, the escalation of Trump's admitted plot to politicize and pursue possibly illegal revenge prosecutions and selective prosecutions out of the doj. And so we have something that is not normal and is rare even if you put aside everything you've experienced in the Trump era. The person charged with protecting Americans and enforcing the law across the country, someone appointed in administrations of both parties who ultimately, as everyone knows, testified and spoke truth to power when he clashed with Donald Trump during the first round of trying to politicize the DOJ and the FBI. James Comey, the former FBI director indicted last night after a very convoluted process, we'll get into that because President Trump had literally admitted that he wanted to call the play and have this person indicted regardless of doubts and evidence problems within his own doj. Comey is now speaking out. When this news first broke about this, within this hour last night, about 24 hours ago, we had just gotten the indictment, just gotten that news. We now have a statement from James Comey which denies any wrongdoing. That indictment you see here is short in substance, in literal length, about a page and a half. And in the bottom there it is, short in signatures because this highly unusual many say prejudicial process lacks the most recent U.S. attorney who's been there since Trump started this year because that person was ousted lacks the career Prosecutors. Just the lone signature of someone with no prosecut experience installed by Donald Trump, apparently to get an indictment that no one else in his DOJ would sign. Now, it alleges that Comey knowingly made a materially false statement in congressional testimony and thus was trying to influence, obstruct, or impede what is Congress's power of inquiry. Now, the indictment is so thin and sometimes indictments are sparse, but not usually this sparse when you're dealing with such a significant high level former official. Doesn't really get into the statements, but there is report that the government wants to go into. Basically whether or not Comey was truthful in referring to people who might have spoken out about what was going on inside the FBI and his views, basically authorizing a type of statement or leak. The charges are rushed because the deadline was next week. The actual legal process of the arraignment for former Director Comey is October 9th. I reported this week that we are past the red line, that if you use the analogy of the boiling frog when it comes to the rule of law, the frog has been boiled and it's dead. And we're now past the red line at a point where we are seeing how people deal with that. In the matter of unconstitutional attacks on free speech, we saw how big powerful rich executives might fold and then backtrack. We saw that this week. In the matter of the rule of law, we've seen how law firms and other individuals who literally take an oath, they're not just taxpaying citizens, they're members of the bar. How they have dealt with these efforts by Donald Trump to abuse power, to use the federal government to deny people legal services or make it harder with what are probably some courts say, likely unconstitutional efforts to kneecap law firms based on their First Amendment and other legal rights who they associate with or represent. Trump's brazen efforts to do this have come with confessions in public and in our strange time, our rapidly shifting media ecosystem, some people say, well, how bad can it be if he's saying it in public? But again, he has admitted to many things in public that he just wants you to accept. Whether or not a judge or jury ultimately accepts this case is one test, but it's not the only one, because there is a wider effort to abuse government power to not only go after people who have taken great risks or done public service or used their First Amendment rights to speak out against him. That is an issue that unites Jimmy Kimmel and James Comey this week in different ways. But government efforts to target that Donald Trump doesn't deny that. They didn't deny that they were targeting Kimmel for what he said. And they don't deny they're targeting Comey for his what they view as opposition to Trump, which is allowed in this country. You still are allowed to serve in the government and then criticize the government or be a citizen and criticize the government. So there are big concerns here about the DOJ's independence. Trump vowing more now that James Comey has been indicted, who is the next person on your list in this retribution? It's not a list, but I think there'll be others. I mean, they're corrupt. There'll be others. Look, it was. That's my opinion. There'll be others. And that is his opinion. The opinion of a politician has always been, and the law governs this different than whether there are facts to bring a case, probable cause to open investigation, guilt beyond a reasonable doubt to convict someone, and prosecutors who take those standards seriously and don't just accept the calls, even from important politicians. James Comey, who knows a lot about this system, he is in that rare position of going from actually overseeing these kinds of cases, developing the evidence, meeting with doj, running the FBI, to being on the other side of the FBI that develops these kind of cases and the DOJ that prosecutes them. And he says he's innocent. And he understands in the wider context why this is a time to also address other Americans about the fear that this president would want anyone to have just for being American, for exercising your rights. So here was Mr. Comey's response.
- [07:05]
Nick Ackerman
We will not live on our knees, and you shouldn't either. I'm not afraid, and I hope you're not either. I hope instead you are engaged, you are paying attention. My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system, and I'm innocent. So let's have a trial and keep the faith.
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Ari Melber
Let's have a trial, which, of course, no single politician controls, even one trying to do all these power grabs. A trial, as we all know from civics textbooks or watching Law and Order, a trial involves other people, 12 of your peers. And Mr. Comey sounds pretty confident that if they don't get this case dismissed before then, and they have some good arguments before then, what are called pretrial motions with regard to government misconduct and other things. But if they don't get it dismissed before then, he sounds pretty confident that 12 people hearing all the evidence will acquit him and perhaps few More negatively, the government's case and the sordid path we got here on now, what is in this two pager I mentioned? It's a thin set of charges. The grand jury reportedly rejected a requested third charge against Comey. There's a form that shows they declined this additional false statements charge, which is significant because, as you probably know from the ham sandwich saying grand juries tend to accept reasonable or well presented government arguments and move it along. In fact, grand juries are generally kind of under the view that this is not the end of the case, it's the beginning. And if somebody's innocent, they'll get their chance later. But they hear out the prosecutors. They're a tool of the prosecutors. And yet on one out of three, they said no already. We also have reporting that only 14 of the 23 grand jurors signed off on these counts, meaning there was already unusually high dissent on the two counts that passed muster. Legal experts say this is a pretty unserious beginning to a case against a very serious, respected government veteran, that it could end in spectacular failure. And in a sign of how we should cover this and whether people should just give in to Trump's effort to misuse the process to make everyone sound like a defendant and be on defense, a warning that this is now what prosecutors do in dictatorships. As for the path I mentioned, the prosecutor who brought the case is formerly Donald Trump's personal defense lawyer, and she is lonely as a legal matter, the sole signatory on that indictment, usually you have several, which shows the legal process of people, again, members of the bar signing their name to something that they think is legally defensible. She doesn't have experience presenting to a grand jury, usually of a matter of this import against an FBI veteran, you'd want a veteran to do it, but she marched in there alone, apparently because no one else would do it. And senior prosecutors had already written what's called a declination memo, ruling that there wasn't evidence to proceed on this case. Now, everything I've just told you is about why it's already this thin. But there's more. And the more is bad news for the Trump doj, which, make no mistake, is in crisis tonight. This is something that they did not want to do. This is something that before Donald Trump publicly hectored them this week and name checked Pam Bondi. The evidence is that she had not cleared the way to do this. And we will find out. We don't have all the evidence yet, but this is now a trial. So if it's not tossed. There's going to be a lot of requests from the Comey defense side to see all of the material that the DOJ has that might have led the other people inside the DOJ to say there's no case here that is in the law, if you want to get into it, what's called Brady material from a case that says defendants have the right to see it, or exculpatory material, and judges enforce that pretty strictly. So the lawyers inside the doj, I don't know if the new lawyer knows it because she's not as experienced, although she did some defense law. So she ought to have some idea that everything that they have that's evidence or that's written material relating to the evidence that shows there was no case, which is why this wasn't brought for many years under career prosecutors, why it wasn't brought as of last week. They got to hand that over. So we might see it. We might see moments that are described in emails or memoranda, descriptions of pressure being brought to bear, whether that's from the president or somewhere else. We might learn why up to this week, Pam Bondi had not signed off on doing this or whether she was informed, briefed or agreed with the doubts about this very case. Remember, prosecutors have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt Comey intended to lie to the Senate committee. Not that there was a misstatement, but that this was his unlawful corrupt intent that day. And this brings me to the more if you say, okay, well, people must have misstatements before Congress, sure. But that criminal level is a high bar for a reason. It's an exclusive, rare group of people who have ever actually gotten in trouble criminally for lying to Congress. And usually, like Michael Cohen, when there were other charges involved. Those convictions average out if you do a rough count, and it's give or take. But it's not a monthly or yearly thing. It's about one a decade, according to an obscure study that looked at this obscure charge. And then remember the other side of the ledger? Donald Trump has weaponized and incentivized going after these kind of opponents. In his view, he sees them as opponents for many years. He was in power for a whole first term. We already know that Comey and his deputy were audited, which was unusual from a financial side. We know that they were investigated. We know that they testified. Remember, Comey went before Congress in a way that some other officials have resisted or delayed. He went and spoke under oath. So they were cooperating. And then they're being investigated for that cooperation and this has been reviewed many times. I'll get into that tonight as well. And that's just Comey. There is a wider list of individuals that Trump has identified as critics or foes. And some are indicted, upper left, some were indicted and the case already fell apart. The mayor, upper middle, Comey indicted yesterday in the case already on the ropes in a substantive and legal sense. Longtime conservative lower right, John Bolton searched, which looks like they're developing a case against that former Trump appointee. And so this chart tells you a story and it's the story we're covering at the end of a big week for America and the Constitution. And the story is it's not about red and blue or left and right. It is about whether you agree with the would be autocrat politician or not. Because if you break with him, even after serving him as Mr. Bolton did, well, your home could get searched, your family harassed, your workplace attacked. And in some cases when he's angry enough to keep hectoring even his own aides who said there was no case there, your life turned upside down as they indict you and threaten you and the people around you with jail. This is America under Donald Trump. So what do we do with it? We have someone who actually personally knows many of the individuals here and has worked at the highest levels of the FBI. Andrew Weissman, I've got a lot of questions for you. Andrew and I are back together in 90 seconds.
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- [16:08]
Ari Melber
We're joined now by Andrew Weissman, former FBI general counsel, a top prosecutor on the Mueller probe, and an individual who both has what we call subject expertise on all these issues and knows a lot of the individuals. Thanks for joining me tonight. You're welcome, Andrew. If we thought this was completely on the level, I would start by asking you to assess the indictment and the case itself. And I will, but I actually don't think based on our reporting and my understanding that that's the place to start, I wanted to begin by asking you to assess the path to this two page indictment and whether substantively, regardless of who's involved, whether you know them, like or dislike them, I would say this if it was anyone prosecuted in this manner, does the path to this look like a standard and acceptable FBI DOJ process you're familiar with, or has it departed in ways that are improper or potentially unlawful?
- [17:04]
Andrew Weissman
I I think that is absolutely the perfect way to start this analysis because that's the thing that we know almost for sure since we don't know everything about the government's case here. I think that the process is so important because you essential have the president using the Department of Justice as a loaded gun that he can point at people. I think it's absolutely correct to relate it to the Eric Adams situation, to the Jimmy Kimmel situation, to using the levers of power in this unilateral fashion here. The things that are so unusual is you do not usually have a series of career people saying there is insufficient proof that and not only the career people saying that, but the Trump political appointee who was the sitting U.S. attorney agreeing with that. And what happens this is somebody who is a Trump loyalist who has put there, who is removed and because his view was that I'm not going to do something that he viewed as inconsistent with the facts and law. So you have career people and you have the Trump appointee saying no, you Then have somebody who is on the case with no prosecutorial experience for essentially a New York minute, who obviously did not have the opportunity to review the facts, interview witnesses, hear from the defense, all of the normal things that you do as a prosecutor to assure the gravity of the situation before you bring a charge. And this just reads like I'm there to do one thing that the president directed the in a tweet be done.
- [18:52]
Ari Melber
Yeah.
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Andrew Weissman
And obviously did not have the time to do that. And you have all sorts of signs, including an incredibly rare vote in the grand jury where you're hearing that it's only 14 of the 23. They needed to get 12 so that just by the skin of their teeth were they able to get 14. And that bodes, just to be clear what that means to me at trial, the government needs to prove their case unanimously. All 12 jurors have to agree to get a conviction. Here they were only able to get 14 out of 23 on the very low standard of probable cause, which is a very low standard compared to pre criminal death.
- [19:38]
Ari Melber
Yeah, join, let me join that point because as you said, there's much we don't know. That's something we do know. And most Americans aren't sitting around memorizing the different vote standards in the criminal justice process. But to echo what you're saying, let you continue because I think it's so important as people make sense of it in this week we've had the early standard is deliberately low. The government gets to move forward if they have some evidence and they don't need, as you mentioned, a unanimous vote. So I would liken that to being tall enough to get on a ride at Disneyland. I don't know if everyone wants to spend their money at Disney right now or not. That's a personal decision. But that's like here and then actually going to trial is like dunking in the NBA. You need to have evidence beyond a reasonable doubt where 12 people who come together as strangers all agree that with no other reasonable doubt or alternative reasonable explanation on the evidence and facts, this individual, whoever it may be, got up that day, went to Congress and planned to lie and obstruct a proceeding. So again, picking up where you were, Andrew, with that mismatch alone, what does that mean about the strength of this case and how this same topic has already been investigated in the Trump first term by the internal DOJ watchdog and a special prosecutor Durham, who looked at a lot of these related issues and Pryor was not found to be a case.
- [21:12]
Andrew Weissman
Yeah. So I mean, just to sort of, you know, be a dog with a bone. The difference is that for the trial jury, it has to be unanimous, not 12 out of 23. It has to be all of the jurors. And it's not probable cause. It's proof beyond a reasonable doubt. That's the highest standard in law. So both of those things mean that if they could only get 14 out of 23 on this very low standard, I mean, they are going to need to either find a new proof or this is a case that's doomed to failure. And having looked at what's now the reporting about what is actually the substance of the claim here, it seems unbelievably weak. There are all sorts of defenses that come to mind, but one is Jim Comey is accused of having told somebody who worked at the FBI that he was. That Jim Comey was authorizing them to speak anonymously to the press. That person is reported to be Dan Richmond, a professor at Columbia Law School, a friend of James Comey. And here's the problem. In the many, many investigations that were done of this and around this area, Dan Richmond is on record saying that James Comey never told him to speak to the media. So if James Comey is going to say, I didn't do it, and the only other person who's part of that conversation said he didn't do it, you really have to wonder, where is the proof? And it starts looking like there's a reason that the career prosecutors and former of the Eastern District of Virginia were saying that you should not bring this case, because who are they going to rely on?
- [23:05]
Ari Melber
Well, and exactly. They may not want to fall flat on their face, that some people may give up their oath or do things they had previously found to be wrong for Donald Trump. Others think even if they do that when the case, if the case were to blow up and fail, then they'd be sitting there with a worse problem personally for their career and an angry president. Anyway. Some have made that calculation. It would seem we'll learn more. Others not. Because he found someone finally to do it. With your experience, Andrew, have you ever seen a matter like this that had been investigated and basically not been deemed a case? Whether there's a full formal declination memo or just the prosecutors say no. And then without new evidence. Have you ever seen that reversed?
- [23:47]
Andrew Weissman
Not in your life. And I worked for Democratic and Republican administrations. I want to make sure people understand this is not a partisan issue. The Republican administrations I've worked for would not in a million years do something like this. It's true for Democratic administrations as well. Reasonable minds can differ when there's levels of proof. That by all accounts is not the situation we're in. And all of the signs are there. I mean, it's just, I mean, look, this is, this is not rocket science. You, you don't have to remove Your own appointed U.S. attorney to put in, you know, essentially a henchman to do this in one day with no additional investigation, no individual review that we know of, and then the case is brought. I mean, it really is, it really is the, the stuff of autocratic regimes that we're seeing happen and unfold right before our eyes.
- [24:48]
Ari Melber
Yeah. Really striking again with your experience, you walking us through it and us making sure we're trying to cover the whole picture of the facts, not just perhaps the bad sounding, potentially distracting Trump indictment piece of it. And not why, according to people who've worked in doj, according to Trump's own appointees, much of this smells terrible. Andrew Weissman, thank you. We'll be coming back to you, I'm sure. Tonight in the show, Andrew and I discussed how the constitutional issues around Jimmy Kimmel echo some of what's happening at the doj. We have another round where Kimmel is winning. Tonight will explain. And the prosecutor who ran the DOJ's criminal division is here. On another aspect of the Comey case and the echoes of Watergate, Nick Ackerman returns to the beat. Next. Finding the music you love shouldn't be hard. That's why Pandora makes it easy to explore all your favorites and discover new artists and genres you'll love. Enjoy a personalized listening experience simply by selecting any song or album, and we'll make a station crafted just for you. Best of all, you can listen for free. Download Pandora on the Apple App Store or Google Play and start hearing the soundtrack to your life. Sometimes an identity threat is a ring of professional hackers.
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- [27:05]
Ari Melber
In the pantheon of American history, our sense of ourselves and our ability to deal with reckon with our own government failures, Watergate looms large. It is the scandal that actually brought down a president. It involved the system ultimately eventually working and there being accountability and many other scandals as you know, are appended with the word gate just as a kind of an echo of Watergate, meaning something or Watergate level or as some books have put it, worse than Watergate. And tonight, people with that experience and many legal experts say what Donald Trump is doing is quite measurably worse than Watergate. Basically running way past what was the red line that actually did factually provide the basis to force Richard Nixon from office. And you can say it was a different time, perhaps a less polarized time, and how people learned about facts was different, but there was still facts that led him to resign. In Trump's case, we are past that red line in terms of the activities and confessions from the president, but those confessions are offered often in public in real time. Now, we're not going to do the entire Watergate history here, but you might recall that Nixon was forced to resign after evidence came out there was smoking gun tapes. He had long fought resisting their release. The Supreme Court of that era really meant no president was above the law. He was the sitting president and they forced the release of that material. As you may recall, last year this more MAGA Supreme Court said the opposite. Even a former president, Donald Trump, had newly discovered immunity. But back then, remember in the recording, which infamously was a tape system that Nixon himself had set up, not realizing it could ever be ripped from his control. The thing that happened was he admitted to abusing power secretly, but admitting it. It was clear he was involved in an effort to use federal government power to abuse the rule of law and distort or corrupt the FBI. Now today, it's not some other agency or example. We are talking about abusing the DOJ and FBI powers to corrupt the FBI and settle a score with a former FBI director who would not go along with that kind of plot. So deep breath, the tapes are grainy, but I'm going to play for you that Key part where Nixon and AIDS were discussing abusing the CIA to shut down the FBI, Nixon, Watergate pro investigation. You know, the identifying. We're back in the problem area because the FBI is not under controls. You calling it. Got it. The FBI is not under control. Play it tough, call them, get control of it secretly through intermediaries and cutouts, but get control of the FBI. That's what the country heard the president secretly order. That is less than what Donald Trump has repeatedly demanded in public, with the added alleged corrupt effort to even jail a former FBI director who wouldn't go along with that kind of politicization. Now, do you remember what happened after that tape came out? I bet some of you do. President Nixon, faced with that pushback, the evidence in public, and a Congress that was not just going along with that kind of lawlessness, he resigned three days after the smoking gun tape came out. Trump goes farther than Nixon and he does it in public. And he says very clearly he wants his attorney general to go after people regardless of evidence. He doesn't even list off the crimes, he just lists off the target, which is, again, something you see in other countries. They don't even always have a very plausible plot because they want everyone to know. Putin doesn't claim that he needs to develop a case against you. He wants everyone from business to politics to a random activist to know they'll just get you. And that is the context for what we now know was an order carried out Trump publicly demanding the AG prosecute a list of people he named Comey Schiff and James Comey, as of last night, indicted. He said we can't delay. He got fast action. The Times reporting it was an extraordinary breach of prosecutorial protocols that reach back to the days following the Watergate scandal. For perspective on this, we are joined by a former Watergate prosecutor, Nick Ackerman. Welcome back to the program, sir.
- [32:15]
Nick Ackerman
Great to be here.
- [32:17]
Ari Melber
What do you see in the echoes of Watergate? And has Trump made Watergate level confessions about an illicit motive here?
- [32:26]
Nick Ackerman
Oh, there's no question. I was actually conducting the grand jury investigations on Nixon's enemies list. And my biggest problem was getting evidence that actually showed criminal intent and motive. Here, Donald Trump lays it out on Truth Social. He lays it out in executive orders. Whether he's going after people he wants to prosecute or universities or colleges that he wants to take control of, or law firms that he wants to put under his spell, he lays it all out. If I ever had this kind of evidence back then, we would have had a field Day the problem was getting that kind of evidence. It was not that easy. We had it on that smoking gun tape that you mentioned. But the biggest change from then is the fact that the Supreme Court has given presidents immunity from doing precisely these kinds of things. John Roberts essentially gave the same light.
- [33:27]
Ari Melber
Let me get on the evidence and then we'll turn to Roberts. You're reminding everyone of that case from last year on the evidence, though today people feel like nothing matters or Trump's getting away with it. You were leading an investigation that worked, as I mentioned, kind of a high watermark. And the tapes, the bad evidence seemed to matter. Later, Nixon reflected on both how he cooperated mostly, turned over a lot of it eventually, versus the idea of destroying it. Take a look. Are you sorry you didn't burn the tapes?
- [34:02]
Nick Ackerman
The answer is I probably should have, but mainly I shouldn't have even installed them.
- [34:11]
Ari Melber
What is the contrast today where Trump says it in public? He's trying to bend all of these institutions. And what do you do legally to both defend people who are, if they're innocent, and also fight back as a country for the rule of law?
- [34:26]
Nick Ackerman
Well, the problem is, just as you said, he's saying it in the public. He's expressing what his motives are. All of these motives are criminal. His intent is criminal. But you cannot bring him to account for this under the criminal system. I mean, all we can do, for example, with James Comey, I think it's very important that he fight this case right to the end, just like Harvard University is fighting right to the end and other law firms have fought right to the end. It's important that the judges in the Eastern District of New York look at this US Attorney and try and do something about it. Try to appoint somebody else under the appropriate statutes. It's important that the public understand that this is a fight that everybody has to be involved in. We cannot sit back. We cannot, as James Comey said, bend our knees to Donald Trump. This is serious business. And it means.
- [35:22]
Ari Melber
And you say chief organisms, you say Chief Justice Robert basically made this worse. How do you mean he made it worse?
- [35:32]
Nick Ackerman
By basically holding that anytime the President uses his executive power that is directing his attorney general to do almost anything, that that is absolutely immune from prosecution. So what does Donald Trump do? He orders Pam Bondi to go after and prosecute James Comey. He orders various other agencies in the federal government to start investigations of Harvard University under the EEOC laws. He orders his people to go after the law firms and to start investigations there. And he comes up with executive orders that all have the sort of umbra of official acts in order to fall within the Supreme Court's immunity decision. That is what's outrageous about the time that we're in is that it was the Supreme Court that greenlighted where we are today.
- [36:29]
Ari Melber
Yeah. Now, Nick, you've seen a lot, I think that's fair to say. When we show this chart of the range of people, I mean, it's not nothing to go after the former FBI director. He knows his way around these things, even if Trump demands it. Some of these people have, have powers. They have incumbent lawyer and, and teams of aides. Others may be out of office. It's like Bolton, when people in the business community, in Wall street, in media executive land, they say, oh, this won't touch them. I mean, they might privately criticize what Trump's doing, but they say they can sit this out because he would never go and do a fake investigation or indictment of them. What do you say to them?
- [37:13]
Nick Ackerman
Nonsense. Everybody's at risk here. Every citizen in this country is at risk. That's why it is so important, for example, for lawyers to organize. If other people are indicted and some of these people can't afford lawyers, lawyers have to pony up and give pro bono services to these people. Everybody has to help out. Our entire democracy is really at stake here. This is something that I never thought I would see in my lifetime. I never expected after Watergate to see another situation like that again. But we have it now in steroids.
- [37:52]
Ari Melber
Yeah. Nick Ackerman, former Watergate prosecutor, longtime counsel. Thank you, sir, as we end a wild week. Thank you. As we end this wild week, Jimmy Kimmel won again that story about the affiliates trying to do the Trump bidding. We have the update for you tonight, and Leslie Caldwell here on how the Justice Department works and whether it's breaking. It's obviously an outrage.
- [38:22]
Nick Ackerman
It's a scandal, and it does feel like a major lurch into further lawlessness in the country.
- [38:30]
Andrew Weissman
This is simply dangerous. He is literally weaponizing the Justice Department. If people get away with this.
- [38:39]
Ari Melber
Lying to a court, manipulating court, withholding exculpatory information to a court of law.
- [38:44]
Andrew Weissman
To get a warrant against America, American citizen for political purposes. The rule of law is died. Look, this is a political prosecution, pure and simple.
- [38:56]
Ari Melber
Lawmakers responding to the Comey indictment, we are joined by Leslie Caldwell, who ran the DOJ's criminal division. Having overseen many high profile cases and the usual process, we begin there. Leslie, I was discussing this with Andrew Weissman. How do you compare what is known about the path to this indictment, to what the process should be.
- [39:18]
Leslie Caldwell
It couldn't be more different. I'd say the comparison would be black and white. The normal process would be, especially in a case involving a high profile individual, significant senior government leader, presidentially appointed, very respected in the bar, you would be very careful in bringing your case. You would, you would gather the evidence, you would learn the evidence, you would interview witnesses, you would put the evidence and the witnesses before the grand jury. You would have an experienced prosecutors handling the case. Here we have experienced prosecutors who had actually written a motion recommending a memo recommending declination of the case, in other words, that it not be charged. And we had a US Attorney who was appointed by President Trump, as I think Andrew mentioned, who refused to bring the case and was either fired or resigned, depending on who you believe. Then we had a new U.S. attorney who's only been in the office for a couple of days, present an indictment. There's no way that even the most experienced prosecutor could have learned all the relevant facts in that short period of time in order to present it to the grand jury and also the indictment itself.
- [40:26]
Ari Melber
Oh, go ahead.
- [40:27]
Leslie Caldwell
I'm sorry.
- [40:28]
Ari Melber
Well, let's talk about that and then I'll let you get in the indictment. But you're mentioning just how absurd that is. And at the risk of over oversimplifying a comparison, bringing this kind of high profile case, as you mentioned, against someone who was the head of the FBI, a lawyer in good standing. He was deputy attorney general under the Bush administration. There are big questions about the history as we've covered tonight, that would be like pretty serious heart surgery for a doctor if law were medicine. And the idea that a doctor would take on a new assignment like that and then turn around in a day or two and try to do it without having done any of the prior research, diagnostics, meetings, prep. There's a point at which the speed becomes a professional problem. It seems that you're alluding to that. And for people who aren't as versed in the process, if someone comes in and it's a tough case and they spend a month reading up and then act, that would look more professional. Even if we debate the innards then doing it on this timeline, you're saying it's almost suspicious to be this fast.
- [41:33]
Leslie Caldwell
Well, I think the reason, there's an obvious reason why they did it this way, because the statute of limitations expires on Tuesday.
- [41:39]
Ari Melber
Right.
- [41:40]
Leslie Caldwell
So they had to ram this through before Tuesday in order to get this indictment, which was obviously ordered by the President. I think also the indictment itself is extremely unusual because it's literally very bare bones and all it really includes, other than the dates, the dates of the supposed offense and the name of the defendant were the elements of the relevant statutes and that they were. That they were met, and that's that. You don't do that. You don't indict cases like that, Especially a case involving the former FBI director. You would have some other language explaining sort of the history of the case and the. And the facts, and it wouldn't just be count one and count two. And I should say count, count one was not returned by the grand jury. So really only two of the three counts, but the, the one that wasn't returned was very similar in terms of its simplicity.
- [42:26]
Ari Melber
It's a very conservative prosecutor. Andrew McCarthy, who spoke about this on Fox. Take a look. Well, I don't think there's a case. It seems to be premised on something that's not true, which is that McCabe said that Comey authorized him to leak to the Wall Street Journal. I don't see how they can make that case. Do you think it's important that members of the bar are candid about the strength of this case right now, given the stakes?
- [42:59]
Leslie Caldwell
Absolutely. I think this case really stands alone among any criminal case that I've ever seen, and I was a Prosecutor for almost 19 years. This is just not how cases are done. Cases are not done at the 11th hour, right before the statute of limitations is. Is about to expire, especially cases that have previously been investigated by multiple people in multiple contexts and found not worthy of bringing. The prosecutors themselves didn't want to bring the case. I think it's really an extraordinarily unusual and flagrant breach of, kind of the duty that DOJ owes to themselves to uphold the Constitution and follow the evidence and do it impartially. This flies in the face of all those things. So I think it's very important. This is not a subtle thing. This is a slam on doj. This is the fire, the buildings burning down kind of thing. And I think that people need to react in a very vocal and aggressive way because this merits that. I mean, you alluded to Watergate before, and I think this, frankly, makes Watergate look very quaint, which it wasn't.
- [44:08]
Ari Melber
Wow. Right? Wow. Leslie Caldwell, former head of the Criminal division. Thank you. We're fit in a break. Jimmy Kimmel winning. Another round to end the week. We'll explain when we come back. Jimmy Kimmel winning again. Disney And ABC had initially felt squeezed by the government up top and affiliates from below saying they weren't going to run Kimmel. We all live through that. He got back on air, but announced that he was still holding back on playing him in some parts of the country. Well, that ends now because those two affiliate holding companies, Sinclair, Nexcar, are now going to put him back on the air. And that starts tonight. Kimmel scored millions in his return to TV this week and many, many millions more watching online, even though we are still being preempted in 60American cities. On Tuesday, we had our second highest rated show in almost 23 years on the our monologue from Tuesday night has more than 21 million views just on YouTube alone. And I want to say we couldn't have done it without you, Mr. President. Thank you very much.
- [45:19]
Nick Ackerman
We got the thumb phone and we appreciate it.
- [45:24]
Ari Melber
Sometimes you got to be able to tell jokes and take a joke. Have a good weekend. It's Stephen A. Smith here. You want sports? SiriusXM's got it all. Every game, every team, all season long. Debates ring, anti takes and no filter whatsoever. Trust and believe. You don't want to miss what I have to say. This week on the Stephen A. Smith show, only on SiriusXM.