Maggie Haberman Shades Trump On Hunt For Indictments: ‘Not The Closest Observer Of Criminal Law’

CNN commentator and New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman shaded President Donald Trump as she discussed his plan to indict former FBI Director James Comey, telling CNN anchor Jake Tapper that Trump isn’t exactly a stickler about the letter of the law.

News broke Wednesday that Comey and New York AG Letitia James (D) will face indictment days after Trump publicly pressured Bondi to go after a list of enemies in a DM-style Truth Social post and again in remarks to reporters. Comey and AG James were named with others in those remarks.

On Wednesday’s edition of CNN’s The Lead, Tapper asked Haberman if it even matters to Trump what Comey ends up being charged with:

JAKE TAPPER: Maggie, what are your sources telling you about this, about these — these potential charges against FBI Director Comey?

MAGGIE HABERMAN: Look, Jake, this is something that, I mean, President Trump has made no secret. What I’ve been hearing from people privately is — is what he’s been saying publicly is that he wants to see James Comey prosecuted. There has been an effort to try to make that happen. There was resistance, I believe, and that’s in some of the reporting that we’re seeing now about going through with this because prosecutors just didn’t believe that there was going to be enough to make a case on, or so we have been told.

Now to go ahead in spite of that is a risk because it’s not really clear that you don’t — you’re not guaranteed an indictment just because you go before a grand jury. And so we will see what this looks like if in fact they go ahead. Now, you know, as CNN’s reporting shows, they are debating what to do. But again, Lindsey Halligan is President Trump’s hand-picked person. He wanted her there.

He did not want Erik Siebert in that role anymore. He was not just Trump’s pick, he — he was his — he was his person, it his office who — who went ahead and backed him. And yes, Democratic senators were fine with him, but that got used against him by some of his — Siebert’s opponents and critics within the administration. So, this is something, again, we know that President Trump has been looking for this for many, many, many years, and I expect him to try to push this ahead as far as possible, but we’ll see.

TAPPER: And just to be clear here, President Trump wanting a prosecution of James Comey, does it matter what the charge is, or he just wants his political enemies charged with something?

HABERMAN: Well, I think to prosecutors it matters. I mean, I don’t think that the president is necessarily the closest observer of the criminal law, but I do think that for prosecutors, they realize there has to be a case that they can argue. We have seen other prosecutions in the Trump era, such as some that emerged from the Durham report, that did not end up in convictions, even though they ended up with indictments. So if there is a decision to move ahead with an indictment here with Comey, you know, then it would go to trial and then we would sit, presumably, and then we would see what that looks like.

There is also a world where there isn’t necessarily an indictment returned. And so this is again — and this is all, Jake, playing out so publicly in the press. This is also typically not what prosecutors want.

Watch above via CNN’s The Lead.

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