See below for video and a transcript of Sen. Tim Kaine’s appearance last night on Jen Psaki’s MSNBC show to talk about the outrageous indictment of James Comey, the firing of not one but TWO U.S. attorneys in Virginia, etc. Explosive, super-important, dangerous developments…everyone should be paying CLOSE ATTENTION to this situation!
“Well, Donald Trump just installed a political hack to do his bidding. Since we talked last week, Trump tweeted out essentially a challenge slash threat to Pam Bondi, saying you’re not going after my political enemies enough. I think that was supposed to be a private message, and it went out to tens of millions of people, and he deleted it. Because it’s the kind of thing that gets cases thrown out of court for malicious prosecution. So he he put in a loyalist as interim Eastern District of Virginia U.S. Attorney – who has no Virginia experience, who has no prosecutorial experience. And clearly he’s told her, you’ve got to go after my enemies. But i’ll raise it up one level. If you’ve looked at our Attorney General, Pam Bondi’s statement tonight, her statement on the indictment says, you know, we’ve indicted for the following reasons. And then the last line is we will follow the facts in this case. Did Pam Bondi go to law school? You follow the facts BEFORE you indict someone for a crime. You do not indict them and say, well now we got to go look for some facts. Her statement shows this thing is a complete political hatchet job. And I think it’s going to blow up in the Trump administration’s face, because having practiced law in the Eastern District of Virginia for 17 years, I don’t see any of the judges in this district dignifying this political persecution in any way.”
“It looks like there’s motions to dismiss the case for malicious prosecution. There may some motion to dismiss it on the grounds that the U.S. Attorney who is pursuing this is not lawfully in place. There’s a statute that says when there’s a vacancy, the DOJ can put an interim prosecutor in for 120 days. That 120 days had passed. And after 120 days, only the district court judges in a district can approve somebody to be the U.S. Attorney. An article in the National Review, hardly a liberal publication, earlier this week said you can’t put a new interim in to do your bidding once the 120-day period has passed. So I think the Comey attorneys have an awful lot of grounds to get this thing thrown out.
Look, I’ve had major differences in the past with Jim Comey I don’t want to really get into. But the guy’s entitled to the rule of law. He’s entitled to fairness. He’s entitled not to be victimized by a clearly trumped-up political persecution. And so i’m going to do everything I can as the senator for this state to make sure that Donald Trump doesn’t pervert our two U.S. attorneys’ offices who have had a high standard for integrity for many, many decades, that he doesn’t pervert them and turn them into engines of political persecution.”
[Jen Psaki: You may not say it. I’ll say it. There may have been a vice president, Tim Kaine, and not a vice president, Mike Pence, had it not been for James Comey. I won’t push you to talk more about that.”]
“Well, I will tell you, I think Pam Bondi did a very important psychological reveal in the statement that she put out tonight. 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.’ 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. She has shown her whole card and kind of revealed that she has deep ambivalence about what Trump is ordering her to do. She’s genuflecting to the boss rather than showing the independence that Americans have come to expect from an Attorney General.
“I’m deeply worried about it, Jen. I have worked with this office. I was a city councilman and mayor in Richmond in the 1990s when Richmond had a horrible homicide problem, and we worked hand in glove with the US attorney in the eastern district, including Jim Comey, who was in the office at the time, to try to come up with strategies to bring down our homicide rate. This district and the Western District of Virginia have stellar reputations for integrity. Donald Trump nominated people for both of these positions after interviewing them and vetting them. And he not only nominated them, but he even appointed them to be interim U.S attorneys. And he’s now fired both of them.
Where you and I are talking about the Eastern District tonight. He also fired the U.S. attorney in the Western District of Virginia. Get this – a former Republican state legislator and prosecutor who became the Republican Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, a pro-Trump Republican. Donald Trump and the DoJ tried to push him around to demote people in the office who had served under multiple presidents, and he said, I’m not doing it. So he’s out the door. Even though Trump nominated him and appointed him to be the interim, Eric Siebert is out the door.
Listen, in Virginia, we say Virginia is for lovers. I also say Virginia is for people who have backbone. We’re not going to get pushed around, and we’re not letting Donald Trump push the federal prosecutors around so he can put in a loyalist and a hack if he wants to. But I don’t think Virginians are going to accept it, and i don’t think our courts are going to accept it.”
