Donald Trump says he won’t get involved in James Comey charges but keeps urging his prosecutors to do it

President Donald Trump has said he doesn’t know if former FBI Director James Comey will face criminal charges, and that he “doesn’t really choose to do so”. This comes just five days after he was publicly and very vocally urging prosecutors to pursue a case against his former adversary. It’s a definite shift from his previous position, where he was making it clear that he wanted Comey to be charged and that he thought the man was “guilty as hell.”

The whole thing seems a bit odd because of how much he was pushing for it. The Justice Department is currently considering charges against Comey for allegedly lying to Congress back on September 30, 2020. It’s a pretty specific charge, and it’s on a tight deadline, since the five-year statute of limitations for the crime of lying to Congress is set to expire on September 30.

That’s probably why Trump was so urgent in his Truth Social posts, where he was yelling, “We can’t delay any longer,” and demanding that “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”. It was an incredibly overt move, aimed right at his Attorney General, Pam Bondi. This isn’t just about a couple of social media posts, though. The entire situation feels like a full-on campaign.

Trump says one thing, but does another

Right after Trump went on this public pressure campaign, he reportedly fired the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik Siebert. Reports suggest that Siebert had been resisting pressure from the administration to bring charges against both Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, citing a lack of evidence. To be fair, this is a major move, and it’s part of a larger pattern where the president has replaced officials he sees as not following his orders with loyalists.

After Siebert was out, Trump quickly got his former defense lawyer, Lindsey Halligan, to take over. Halligan, who had previously worked on the classified documents case at Mar-a-Lago, has no prior experience as a prosecutor. It’s a move that has a lot of people in the legal community concerned, as it seems to signal a willingness to use the Justice Department to go after political enemies, regardless of whether there’s enough evidence to support a case.

The timing of the replacement, just as the Comey deadline was looming, feels less like a coincidence and more like a direct attempt to influence the outcome. When asked about it on September 25, Trump was surprisingly hands-off.

“I can’t tell you what’s going to happen because I don’t know,” he said, and insisted that he wouldn’t get involved. He added that the decision would be made by “very professional people,” including Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. But even as he was saying this, he couldn’t help but continue his attacks on Comey.

“I can only say that Comey is a bad person,” he stated. He went on to say, “He’s a sick person. I think he’s a sick guy, actually. He did horrible things at the FBI. I have no idea what’s going to happen”.