The procedure which will take place Wednesday morning at the Federal Justice of Alexandria, in Virginia, will have the superficial attributes of any other indictment: the accused will appear before a judge, will hear the charges against him and sign the documents.
But the first appearance before the court of James B. Comey, the former director of the FBI, accused of having lied to the congress five years ago, will be a very unusual event with potentially enormous political and legal implications.
The accusation of Mr. Comey, who ordered the investigation into the ties of the Trump campaign with Russia in 2016, represents the most important judicial measure taken against those whom President Trump has publicly targeted as a reprisals.
The case was presented before a large jury on September 25 – despite the opposition of Virginia’s Oriental District Prosecutors – by Lindsey Halligan, a white house official has in a hastily named by Trump as an American procure after his predecessor found insufficient evidence to charm Mr. Comey.
This occurred shortly after the president almost ordered the Attorney General Pam Bondi to take legal action against Mr. Comey; Senator Adam B. Schiff, a Californian democrat; And New York General Prosecutor, Letitia James.
“Nothing is done,” he wrote in an article on his Truth Social platform. “And Comey, Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff, Leticia ??? They are all guilty, but nothing will be done.”
Comey risks up to five years in prison if he is found guilty, even if many current and former prosecutors believe that the case will be difficult to prove – if his lawyers fail to quickly reject the accusations.
“My family and I had been about it for years that held up to Donald Trump had a cost, but we could not imagine living differently,” said Comey in a video published a few hours after his indictment.
“We will not live on their knees, and you should not either,” added Mr. Comey, who brought together a formidable defense team, including Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the former American prosecutor in Chicago known to pursue important cases of terrorism and corruption.
The indictment was initially scheduled for Thursday, but the chief judge of the district court put it in day, invoking logistics and security problems.
The images of revenge are of great importance for Mr. Trump, who has acquired national notoriety as a reality TV star which often watched his programs without sound to better judge his appearance.
An agent from the FBI external office in Washington was suspended after refusing to organize an escort of law enforcement officials in uniform to accompany Mr. Comey to the courthouse in front of the media, according to people aware of this decision who spoke under the cover of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
We still don’t know how it would have worked. Until now, Mr. Comey has only received a quote to appear in court, even if the arrests are not uncommon in such cases.
In 2022, Peter Navarro, a long -standing advisor of Trump, was placed in police custody and handcuffed when he rose aboard a plane in Washington, an act criticized as too aggressive by the judge responsible for his case.
Ms. Halligan, who narrowly obtained an indictment for two charges after a fragile solo appearance before the Grand Jury, had trouble convincing someone in his new office to help them in his business, according to the current and former prosecutors of the office.
Two prosecutors working in the Oriental District of North Carolina, Tyler Lemons and Gabriel Diaz, officially announced on Tuesday that they had been assigned to the case, according to the judicial archives.
The case threw a corrosive veil on the eastern district of Virginia, one of the most important federal prosecutor offices in the country.
Erik S. Siebert, the former American District Prosecutor, suffered pressures from Mr. Trump after having declared his superiors from the Ministry of Justice that there was not enough evidence against Mr. Comey or, in another potential case, against Ms. James. Mr. Siebert resigned on September 19, a few hours after the president asked for his eviction.
Since then, the people appointed by the Ministry of Justice of Trump have dismissed two career prosecutors who had also opposed the indictment of Comey without reason. Many other officials from the Virginie Oriental District have applied for exterior jobs or have written notes justifying their actions in the event that they should challenge staff actions or pursue the Department in justice.
The two -page simple indictment against Mr. Comey was signed only by Ms. Halligan, a former defense lawyer by Mr. Trump who exercised the functions of intermediate level lawyer at the office of the Secretary of the Staff of the White House.
Comey was charged with a fake declaration accusation and a head of obstacle to a convention procedure in connection with his testimony before a senatorial committee in September 2020.
The judicial archives indicate that Ms. Halligan also tried to bring the great jury to instill Mr. Comey for a second accusation of false declaration, which was rejected.
Comey is not the first former FBI chief to face criminal charges. In 1978, L. Patrick Gray, an active former office chief during the Watergate, was charged with a conspiracy to violate the constitutional rights of the Americans.
The prosecutors said that he had authorized agents to break into breakthroughs without a mandate, in order to track down the fugitive members of Weather Underground, the Violent Group of the far left.
The accusations brought against Mr. Gray were abandoned two years later.
