Unsurprisingly, Trump Justice Department prosecutors are in no hurry to try former FBI director James Comey on the absurd allegations that he threatened to murder President Trump by posting a photograph of seashells arranged to read “86 47.”
The prosecutors raised no objection to the defense’s request to postpone the trial, originally scheduled for October, to February of next year. I will simply repeat the question I posited back in the spring, when the DOJ voiced no objection to the last postponement — for three months — while Comey is at liberty, released on his own recognizance:
If federal prosecutors believed they were dealing with a person who had actually threatened to assassinate the president of the United States, what do you suppose the odds are that they’d agree to postpone the trial for one day, never mind 14 weeks? What are the chances that Comey would have been released on his own recognizance, as he was after his appearance in court on the charges — a proceeding that took less than ten minutes?
And now the DOJ has agreed to put the matter off for another 20 weeks.
Presiding over the case in the Eastern District of North Carolina (the scene of the “crime”), Judge Louise Flanagan (a Bush-43 appointee), granted the request, citing the extensive pretrial motions to dismiss the charges — on which she has not yet ruled, and preparation of which made it difficult for the parties to prepare for an October trial.
I continue to doubt there will be a trial. The indictment fails to charge a true threat under settled law. Judge Flanagan should grant the defense motions to dismiss it.