Things got heated online after a longtime Fox News Channel contributor and supposedly conservative legal commentator, Andy McCarthy, took to arguing both on FNC and in the pages of the notoriously anti-Trump National Review that the DOJ case against former FBI Director James Comey is “factually without foundation” and “should be dismissed”.
As background, Mr. Comey, who served as the FBI Director under President Obama, was originally indicted on two charges, one of which was making false statements to Congress and the other of which was obstruction of a congressional proceeding. The charges stem from Mr. Comey’s allegedly false testimony about the FBI’s involvement in the 2016 Russia Hoax and related investigation before the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 30, 2020.
Ignoring the seemingly clear evidence that Mr. Comey lied, evidence that the federal grand jury found compelling, Mr. McCarthy wrote a scathing article for the National Review on the matter titled, “With More Scrutiny, the Trump DOJ Indictment of Comey Gets Worse.”
In that fury-filled article, McCarthy alleged that the case against Mr. Comey “is so ill-conceived that the longer one analyzes it, the worse it gets.” Continuing, the longtime Deep State hack insisted that ” it is incoherently drafted, such that it fails to fulfill an indictment’s constitutional purpose.”
Concluding his take on the case and its merits, Mr. McCarthy argued that the case needs to be dismissed because it both doesn’t have a factual foundation and wasn’t properly pled. He snapped, “The indictment is inadequately pled and factually without foundation. It should be dismissed.”
McCarthy said much the same thing during an appearance on Fox News, insisting that Sen. Ted Cruz mischaracterized the leak at issue in the case. He began, “I love Ted, but McCabe never said that Comey authorized it. What McCabe said was that McCabe authorized it. This is a leak to the Wall Street Journal, and then he told Comey about it later.”
Continuing, he insisted that because Mr. McCabe had authorized the leak, not Mr. Comey, really he didn’t lie to the Senate about it. He said, “The only way that you could convict Comey beyond a reasonable doubt is Comey would have to truly believe that he personally had authorized the leak. He would have to actually have authorized the leak, and then he would have had to know that he was lying when he denied it to the Senate.”
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Mr. McCarthy then added, in that same appearance on the supposedly conservative cable news network, “They’re not even going to be able to prove that he authorized the leak, because by all accounts, he didn’t. So I don’t think this case even gets to trial.” Watch him here:
Predictably, McCarthy faced severe pushback from MAGA conservatives on X. One, for example, wrote, referencing his FNC appearance, “Bolton’s friend Andy McCarthy is having a melt-down, he is probably under investigation himself. He is trying to endear himself to the left in the hopes of getting legal funding. Tell us about your involvement in the Mar-o-Lago raid, Andy.”
Similarly, another poster on X referenced the same appearance and argued that it made him look like he is a Democrat rather than a conservative, saying, “Andy McCarthy. I never realized he was a Democrat. WOW ! Some of his comment are heavy leaning left ! surprising to me ! Huh!” Another poster argued, “So that’s why Andy McCarthy is a deep state Rat…Never trust him again, he thinks Comey is innocent.”