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London: Former FBl boss James Comey says Donald Trump is in big trouble as he appears in court in Miami where the former US president has pleaded not guilty to the alleged mishandling of classified documents.
Comey’s announcement in the final days of the 2016 election campaign that the FBI was reopening its investigation into former secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server was regarded as a major contributing factor in Trump’s first successful tilt at the presidency. Comey concluded his investigation – with no action against Clinton – two days before the election.
Former FBI director James Comey.Credit: AP
Comey said Clinton’s use of a private email to handle sensitive information was nothing like the case brought against Trump, who is facing 37 felony counts relating to his hoarding of classified documents, including some containing information on nuclear capabilities.
“It’s so readily distinguishable that anyone who can’t readily distinguish it is not interested in doing it and there are many of those in the States,” Comey told an event hosted by the How To Academy at London’s Conduit Club in Covent Garden on Tuesday.
Comey said Clinton’s case was never about her use of a private email server, but rather about her use of an unclassified email system to discuss classified matters. He said top-secret information was discussed wrongly in this way only eight times.
“There was no proof of obstructive conduct on her part, no proof of false statements on her part,” Comey said.
“It’s about an enormous amount of material, actual documents, classified at very, very high levels, consistently more sensitive information than discussed in the emails and most importantly this case is about obstruction of justice … and flaunting of the law.
“There was no consideration of charges of that in the Clinton case, so they’re both about classified information [but] really, the similarities end there.”
Comey said having read the indictment, he believed Trump was in “big trouble.”
“Inside the courtroom – you can say whatever you want with hair dye running down your face at a press conference,” he said, referring to former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani’s infamous press conference after the 2020 election, “but in an American courtroom or a British courtroom, heaven help you, if you are a lawyer making false statements, saying things you don’t believe, and the witness involved testifies under the pain of perjury.
“The reason I say it that way, is he will make a lot of effort outside the courtroom but inside the courtroom if he’s able to find a good lawyer, [I think they might] tell him ‘woah, you’ve got a real problem.’”
Comey said this meant the US was facing the prospect of being asked to vote for a president who had been convicted and sentenced to prison and barred from voting for themselves.
“We may face that in the United States,” he said.
Trump is considered the frontrunner to win the Republican primary and top US pollster Frank Luntz has told this masthead the former president now has a chance of winning the White House again.
Luntz said US democracy was being weakened because truth was no longer about facts, but choosing a subjective version of reality.
Comey also said that truth was under assault and that, in his view, it had begun during the Trump presidency.
“Steve Bannon, one of the henchmen of Donald Trump, famously said you’ve just got to fill the zone with shit so that people can’t figure out what’s true or false – just overwhelm their ability,” he said.
“There are notions, senses in which truth is subjective.
“You could dislike rain … I can like rain – but there’s only one truth about whether it’s raining in this room and I felt like we were at a place in America where those distinctions weren’t relevant any more.”
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