It’s amateur hour in the Eastern District of Virginia...
Rule 29 of the Rules of Criminal Procedure provides that if the evidence is insufficient to sustain a conviction after the government rests its case at trial, the judge “must enter a judgment of acquittal.” This indictment seems destined for that fate...
..the charging theory is muddled because the indictment bootstraps testimony Comey gave in 2017, necessitated by the expiring five-year statute of limitations. As a result, it is unclear exactly what lie is alleged. The quoted language appears to come from a question asked by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) at a Senate committee hearing on Sept. 30, 2020, the date of the alleged offense. But Cruz was asking Comey about testimony he had given three years earlier at a different hearing in response to a question from Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). At that time, the committee was investigating the FBI’s probe into connections between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and its inquiry into Clinton’s use of a private email server. It was Grassley who had used the words quoted in the indictment, but his full question provided more context. Grassley had asked Comey if he had “ever authorized someone else at the F.B.I. to be an anonymous source in news reports about the Trump investigation or the Clinton investigation.” Those words were omitted from Thursday’s indictment, perhaps because they are problematic for the prosecution. In 2020, when Cruz asked Comey about that exchange, he botched the wording. Instead of accurately quoting Grassley, Cruz said “Clinton administration,” not “Clinton investigation.” The only Clinton administration in American history is the presidency of Bill Clinton, and it was not the subject of any FBI investigation under Comey. Therefore, Comey’s denial in response to this question had nothing to do with “Person 1.”
www.dailymail.co.uk
