Trump Blasts Comey On Twitter — Law Blog Author Explains How Things Actually Work (TWEETS)

A friend of former FBI Director James Comey, and a prolific law blog author, has blasted President Donald Trump for making comments on Twitter about a legal process the president apparently doesn’t fully understand.

Trump tweeted out this morning about a report on James Comey, in which the former director had written a draft statement that cleared Hillary Clinton’s name when it came to her use of a private email server as Secretary of State, the Hill reports.

The draft statement wasn’t official, however, and Comey didn’t release any decision about Clinton until he had interviewed her and others.

In response to Trump’s wild-eyed assessment on Twitter, Benjamin Wittes, a close friend of Comey’s who writes for the blog Lawfare, scolded the president, calling Trump’s assessment a “slime-job” against the former FBI director.

Wittes explained that the investigation into Clinton was already nine months old, and unless the interviews with her revealed something new, it was heading toward an open-and-shut case of no criminal wrongdoing on her part. “Unless HRC lied to the FBI or it found something new, this was headed for a declination,” he wrote.

Wittes also took the president to school, so to speak, telling him what Comey did isn’t uncommon for prosecutors or even judges and justices to do. He was simply preparing for the inevitable — that Clinton would face no charges based on the evidence he had already collected.

And Wittes took the time to take a subtle proverbial punch against the president, too, telling him that “smart people think ahead and prepare,” something that Trump should consider doing himself for a change.

Wittes closed his thoughts out by explaining that creating a draft document is not the same as coming to a conclusion. Comey could have changed his mind if new evidence came about, he explained.

Featured image via Gage Skidmore/Flickr, CC By SA-2.0