Jonathan Turley breaks down why obstruction charge could be most damaging for Comey

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said Friday that the obstruction charge in James Comey’s indictment could carry the steepest consequences for the former FBI director.

Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutors indicted Comey on charges of lying to lawmakers and interfering with a congressional probe. In an appearance on “Special Report with Bret Baier,” Turley said that unlike vague testimony, the obstruction count suggests concrete conduct that prosecutors believe crossed the line.

“The obstruction count is really intriguing. That suggests that there was conduct, besides obviously that false statement, and that’s what we really need to look at. An obstruction count can go from five to 10 years of potential sentencing. But it depends on what the obstruction was,” Turley said.

Turley said the most serious questions surrounding Comey stem from his 2020 statement about an alleged leak, which he said leaves no room for interpretation.

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“We really need to see what the underlying allegations are. One of the reasons we have been focusing on his statement in 2020 about the leak is because that’s not a matter of interpretation. Much of what people objected to with Comey over the years is that his answers were very evasive. He tended to say he didn’t remember things that you would think he would remember because they were rather momentous,” Turley added.

Turley said that unlike Comey’s shifting recollections on past issues, the leak allegation presents a clear-cut question of fact.

“And then he would remember other details, no matter how fine the grain. But this is different. With regard to that leak, either he did leak the information or cause someone to leak it, or he did not. And that is not a matter of interpretation,” Turley said.

Turley said that Comey’s past answers often came off as evasive, with selective memory on significant events.

“If that’s the false statement, the question [is] what is the underlying information that supported the indictment? And the question here is if it is the same statement that we have been talking about, could he face his former associate and friend, McCabe, and will he repeat on the stand that ‘I was told to leak this by Comey’? That’s one of the things we will be looking at for that source,” Turley said.

Early reports on Wednesday said the DOJ planned to ask a grand jury to indict Comey for allegedly lying to Congress in 2020. The move came after a CIA memo in July showed that Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan faced a criminal probe over their handling of the Steele Dossier in congressional testimony.

The memo flatly challenged their sworn denials that the dossier influenced the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment. The review concluded that Brennan pressed to insert the Steele Dossier,  the dossier that former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele drafted and financed through Hillary Clinton’s campaign, into the assessment.

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