Fox News pundit Andry McCarthy has now turned on President Trump over the indictment of former FBI director James Comey.
“I don’t think there’s a case,” Fox News contributor Andy McCarthy said Friday during an appearance on Fox Business’s Mornings with Maria.
McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor and legal analyst, was discussing the Justice Department’s move to pursue charges against Comey in connection with his handling of sensitive leaks related to Hillary Clinton’s emails and the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Much of the administration’s case, McCarthy said, hinges on claims about Comey’s interactions with then-FBI Deputy Andrew McCabe. “McCabe said that Comey authorized him to leak to The Wall Street Journal,” McCarthy explained. “If you look closely at what McCabe said, what McCabe said was that he directed a leak to The Wall Street Journal and told Comey about it after the fact. So it’s true that Comey never authorized it in the sense of OKing it before it happened. I don’t see how they can make that case.”
The legal analyst emphasized that the evidence appears focused less on the underlying Russiagate allegations than on contested procedural questions about internal FBI communications. “It’s premised on something that’s not true,” McCarthy said.
Questions about the indictment have also been raised by Democrats, though in a way that underscores partisan tensions surrounding the Justice Department.
Senator Tim Kaine (D-Va.) suggested that Attorney General Pam Bondi may be acting under pressure from the president. “If she felt that there was rock-solid evidence to indict Jim Comey, she wouldn’t have finished her official statement with the line, ‘We will follow the facts in this case,’” Kaine said on MSNBC Thursday.
“You know, that’s what you do if you’re like an investigating officer or even a prosecutor to decide whether to indict somebody. You don’t indict somebody and then say, ‘Well, now, we got to figure out what the facts tell us,’” he added on The Briefing with Jen Psaki. Kaine suggested that Bondi’s statement reflected a “deep ambivalence” about whether she was merely executing Trump’s directives.
Conservative critics, however, have defended Bondi, arguing that she has acted responsibly in her oversight of the investigation. McCarthy noted in a February op-ed that Bondi has a duty to represent the Justice Department’s interests and provide a “good-faith defense” of government conduct. “If she is just going to spout Trump’s grievances without putting the Justice Department’s egregious behavior in context, then she’s engaging in partisan law enforcement, exactly the noxious practice she claims to be rooting out,” he wrote.
The case against Comey comes amid broader scrutiny of politically charged prosecutions in Washington.
Critics on both sides of the aisle have warned that pursuing high-profile targets without clear evidence risks politicizing the Justice Department and undermining public confidence in the rule of law.
As the legal proceedings unfold, observers note that the controversy highlights deep divisions over accountability and impartiality in federal law enforcement, with both partisan accusations and legal questions shaping the debate.
[READ MORE: Trump Presidential Library Could Find Home in Downtown Miami]
