CNN anchor and chief White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins confronted ex-Trump lawyer James Trusty over President Donald Trump’s pressure campaign to indict former FBI Director James Comey, throwing Trusty’s own past words back at him.
News broke Wednesday that Comey and New York AG Letitia James (D) would likely face indictment days after Trump publicly pressured Attorney General Pam Bondi to go after a list of enemies in a DM-style Truth Social post and again in remarks to reporters.
Sure enough, the Comey indictment dropped on Thursday, with a defiant Comey pledging to fight it out in court.
On Friday night’s edition of CNN’s The Source with Kaitlan Collins, the anchor pushed back on Trusty’s criticisms of Comey as irrelevant, and reminded him of what he once had to say about prosecutors pursuing political grudges:
COLLINS: I just think everything you mentioned there doesn’t mean he lied to Congress, or that they’ll be able to secure a conviction.But I do want to ask, because in 2020, you warned that prosecutors should be dedicated to the truth, not looking for high-profile skins and acting out of political animus.The President made very clear here that, that he wanted this to happen. I mean, he explicitly said it, over the weekend.TRUSTY: I mean, are you — look, can any of us be surprised that a guy who went through four years of insanely-weaponized DOJ,
including Comey at the helm, would have some animus towards him? Of course, he has some animus towards him.What I was actually heartened to see, and you played big chunks of the clips here–COLLINS: Does that make it right?TRUSTY: –is him kind of backing — no, no, but let me just say, he also modified a lot of this to say, Hey, I’ve got people with DOJ making this decision. I just think Comey is a bad guy.Look, from everything I’ve seen about Jim Comey, and from FBI agents that I talked to, and I’m talking about a lot of people that are former agents that are around for a long time, they realize that Comey did lasting damage to the FBI in his behavior. His ambush interviews of Flynn, his little jokes on the beach, his condescending and obnoxious behavior, even in a Hillary Clinton situation, right?He, as a former Deputy Attorney General, had no business going out there and talking about that case at all. But this is a guy, who injects himself into the spotlight, because he thinks he’s so important. So, at the end of the day, it’s hard to shed a crocodile tear for him–COLLINS: But again, that doesn’t mean that he should be–TRUSTY: –even if there’s open questions–COLLINS: Yes.TRUSTY: –about the process.COLLINS: Imean, the process is what matters here given, of course, the questions here. And obviously, Comey had been fired long before Trump was indicted.But, I mean, it just raised questions in terms of what that means for the validity of the prosecution, given the guy who was in this U.S. Attorney’s position resigned, because he didn’t think the case was strong enough.
Watch above via CNN’s The Source with Kaitlan Collins.