Pam Bondi's ouster linked to rushed Comey indictment: report

The sudden decision of the Justice Department to bring an indictment against former FBI Director James Comey was linked to the dismissal of former Attorney General Pam Bondi, MS NOW's Carol Leonnig reported on Thursday.

The new indictment charges Comey with threatening violence against President Donald Trump, based on an Instagram post he made last year of seashells spelling out "8647" — meaning "86" Trump, the 47th president. The term "86" has many different meanings and is frequently used in politics to mean ending someone's career; Comey has denied he intended any violent connotations.

"Then-Attorney General Bondi had pushed her team to keep pursuing Virginia-based charges against Comey for lying to Congress, concluding that case was significantly stronger than potential charges based in North Carolina that he threatened to kill or harm Trump," said the report. "In late March, before Bondi’s firing, Justice Department aides were urging that they delay charging Comey on the presidential threat case and wait until the Senate confirmed interim U.S. Attorney Ellis Boyle to be the permanent head of the federal prosecutors’ office in the Eastern District of North Carolina, according to a person familiar with the discussions."

Even at the time of the first indictment, Bondi had reportedly expressed concerns about the strength of the case.

This information comes shortly after Joseph diGenova, the far-right attorney whom Trump's DOJ put in charge of looking for criminal charges to file against the FBI and DOJ officials who investigated Trump's ties to Russia in 2016, revealed Bondi had apparently been an obstacle to that move as well.

"The Trump Justice Department’s reliance on interim U.S. attorneys has been a legal vulnerability for multiple prosecutions of people Trump has dubbed his enemies, including Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James," said the report. "The DOJ had suffered a setback when a federal judge dismissed the original false statements charges against Comey in the Eastern District of Virginia, ruling that the interim U.S. attorney was illegally appointed and had signed the charges alone. A federal rule says the attorney general may only appoint a U.S. attorney on an interim basis for a period of 120 days without Senate confirmation."