'I get why they did it, but I still think it was a mistake,' Comey said
James Comey slams DOJ for going 'too slow' in prosecuting Trump
Former FBI Director James Comey said the Biden DOJ was too slow to prosecute former President Trump and it could be costly.
Former FBI Director James Comey said the Biden Department of Justice had been "too slow" in investigating former President Trump in an interview on Tuesday, calling it a critical mistake.
Comey told MSNBC's Alex Wagner he had learned valuable lessons from his days as a national punching bag for his role in the 2016 election.
"As someone who's caught a lot of rocks, I'm reluctant to throw any, but I do think they overlearned some of the lessons from my own experience and from the Trump administration, and they were too slow," he said. "And it's cost us because we finally got a special counsel very late in the game, and we're stuck the way we are."
"I would’ve hoped they would’ve moved faster, but given when they came into office, what they were trying to accomplish, I get why they did it," he added. "But I still think it was a mistake."
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Former FBI Director James Comey appears on MSNBC on May 21, 2024. (MSNBC / Screenshot)
Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith in November 2022 as special counsel to oversee federal investigations into Trump's alleged mishandling of classified documents and his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
Trump was indicted last year by the DOJ in both cases, but there is no clear trial start date for either one after various postponements and motions. It appears increasingly likely that the only trial Trump will sit for before the 2024 election is his current case in New York, where he's charged with falsifying business records about a hush money payment to Stormy Daniels.
Some Democrats have fumed that Garland was too careful to avoid looking political in investigating Trump. The New York Times called the investigation "maddeningly slow" in a deep dive into the probe in March.
"I think that delay has contributed to a situation where none of these trials may go forward," Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., told CNN earlier this year, according to the Times. "The department bears some of that responsibility."
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President Joe Biden and Ex-FBI Director James Comey. (Getty Images)
Comey was fired by Trump as FBI director in 2017 and has become a staunch critic of the former president. He called for people to support President Biden in the election regardless of their personal feelings, warning Trump would target the DOJ and FBI if he's elected again to a second term.
Comey suggested Garland had taken too many lessons from the 2016 election, when the FBI and Hillary Clinton's private email server dominated headlines. Comey announced the re-opening of the investigation into Clinton's server in late October after her emails surfaced in a separate investigation of Anthony Weiner, which Clinton has said contributed to her defeat.
"I have a deep and lasting regret that we were involved at all," Comey told MSNBC. "I felt that in the exact moment I was briefed on what had happened with the investigation on the 27th of October. It's interesting to look back and see as we were wrestling with this nightmare, trying to figure out which of our options was the least bad, all of this was going on on the Trump side trying to suppress information."
The Department of Justice didn't reply to a request for comment.
