Former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director James Comey is pushing to dismiss his indictment because he answered “fundamentally ambiguous questions with literally true answers.”
Comey faces charges for lying to Congress during his September 2020 testimony, where he allegedly claimed not to have “authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports” regarding an investigation into Hillary Clinton, and obstructing a Congressional investigation.
“Here, the indictment conspicuously omits the lengthy, confusing questions that prompted Mr. Comey’s testimony,” Comey’s motion filed on Thursday states.
Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz asked Comey during the aforementioned 2020 hearing on whether his prior testimony in 2017, where he affirmed to Sen. Chuck Grassley that he never authorized someone to be an anonymous source in news reports, was true in light of his deputy Andrew McCabe’s claim that he leaked information to The Wall Street Journal with Comey’s knowledge.
“Now, what Mr. McCabe is saying and what you testified to this committee cannot both be true; one or the other is false,” Cruz asked Comey, according to the motion. “Who’s telling the truth?”
Comey stood by his prior testimony.
“So, your testimony is you’ve never authorized anyone to leak,” Cruz followed up. “And Mr. McCabe when if he says contrary is not telling the truth, is that correct?”
Comey replied that he would not “characterize Andy’s testimony, but mine is the same today.”
“Senator Cruz’s questions are fundamentally ambiguous because people of ordinary intellect would not be expected to understand that he meant to ask a broad question about Mr. Comey’s interactions with anyone at the FBI—including Daniel Richman—during a colloquy focused on Mr. McCabe,” Comey’s attorneys argued in the motion. “On the contrary, a reasonable person readily would have understood Senator Cruz to be asking only whether Mr. Comey had specifically authorized Mr. McCabe to be an anonymous source in news reports.”
Columbia University law professor Daniel Richman, who the indictment alleges leaked information for Comey, was hired by Comey as a “Special Government Employee” and given “a Top Secret clearance,” according to internal memos the FBI released in August. Comey also used Richman “as a liaison to the media,” according to the memos.
“On that reasonable understanding, the indictment contains no allegations that Mr. Comey’s answers were false: it never alleges that Mr. Comey made a false statement regarding Mr. McCabe,” Comey’s motion states. “On the contrary, the indictment omits Senator Cruz’s statements about Mr. McCabe, obscuring the context necessary to understand both the questions themselves and Mr. Comey’s responses.”
In a separate filing Thursday, Comey requested the government file a “bill of particulars” clarifying the indictment. He states that the government “has failed to provide any detail about when and how Mr. Comey allegedly authorized Mr. Richman to serve as an ‘anonymous source,’ or which news reports Mr. Richman was allegedly authorized to serve as an ‘anonymous source’ for.”
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