James Comey’s lawyers want the DOJ to tell him what, exactly, they think he lied about
By Holmes Lybrand, CNN
(CNN) — Attorneys for former FBI Director James Comey argued in a filing Thursday that the indictment against their client is too vague and have requested a detailed explanation of what false statements, exactly, Comey allegedly made to Congress.
The dispute is at the heart of a new motion to dismiss the case his attorneys also filed Thursday, arguing that questions posed to him by GOP Sen. Ted Cruz during a 2020 hearing “were fundamentally ambiguous” and that Comey’s answers are not false statements as prosecutors have alleged.
Comey is being charged with making false statements and obstructing Congress. He has pleaded not guilty.
During a Senate hearing in September 2020, Cruz asked a series of questions both on whether Comey had ever been an anonymous source or authorized someone at the FBI to leak information, while adding other questions throughout.
While Comey told Cruz he stood by his testimony from three years prior – where he said he had never been an anonymous source in news reports or allowed others to be anonymous sources – Comey is accused of leaking information about the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server through one of his former attorneys.
Comey’s attorneys argue the law “does not authorize the government to create confusion by posing an imprecise question and then seek to exploit that confusion by placing an after-the-fact nefarious interpretation on the ensuing benign answer.”
The former director’s attorneys also want the judge presiding over the case to release records from the grand jury who handed up the indictment against Comey because, they say, prosecutors “may have misstated key factual and legal issues.”
The judge presiding over the case set a hearing for Wednesday to discuss the prosecutor’s motion to review communication between Comey and his attorneys.
Prosecutors have suggested that some material in the case relates to communications with Comey’s attorneys and want to be able to review the material, which his attorneys object to, noting that the material is privileged communication and was obtained during a separate investigation into the former director.
The-CNN-Wire
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