'Very high likelihood of conviction' in Trump's hush money trial: former FBI director
May 21, 2024
Former FBI Director James Comey has overcome his initial skepticism about the hush money case against Donald Trump and now believes he's quite likely to be convicted.
The former president has been charged with falsifying financial records to cover up hush money payments to an adult film actress to prevent voters from learning about their sexual relationship, which prosecutors say amounts to an illegal campaign contribution, and Comey told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" the evidence is much stronger than the indictment indicated.
"I've tried a lot of cases, so it is dangerous to talk about them when you haven't been in the courtroom for every moment," Comey said. "This seems to have gone very well, built brick-by-brick in a way that's not cross-examinable, with documents and texts and the defendant's own voice – much better than I expected. I told my family, from the outside, I would think this is a very high likelihood of conviction, less likely of a hung jury, approaching zero for an acquittal."
However, even if he's convicted, Trump is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee and quite likely to be re-elected to a second term, and Comey has grave concerns about that possibility.
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"He is a threat to the rule of law in America," Comey said. "That's, to me, what this election is about. It's not about policy differences, it's about what kind of country are we going to be? If he has the ability, smarter than he was last time, to use the power of the Department of Justice and FBI to target his enemies, especially, the rule and law of America will change."
"In the first term, it was a wish: 'I want people to go after so and so,' go after Andrew McCabe, the former deputy director of the FBI," Comey added. "In a second term, he'd go a step further, I'm highly confident, and say, 'I want him criminally investigated.' He was close to the bottom of the barrel in his appointees last time. He will be at the very bottom, those are the people who will carry out that order."
Trump himself has been indicted four times, although only the hush money case appears likely to be tried before the November election, and Comey predicted that Trump would kill the other prosecutions if re-elected.
"Yes, the person who would incite a mob to sack the Capitol will dismiss the cases pending against him," Comey said. "He puts an attorney general in, more likely puts an acting [attorney general] in who dismisses [special counsel] Jack Smith and they drop the indictment, as simple as that."
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