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Published On: Fri, Sep 26th, 2025

Ken Dilanian: A President Urging DOJ To Bring Charges Against A Political Opponent Is A “Watershed”

MSNBC justice correspondent Ken Dilanian reacts to the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey and reports on what the justice community is saying on Thursday’s “The Briefing With Jen Psaki.”

JEN PSAKI, MSNBC HOST: Tonight, what are you hearing from your sources in law enforcement right now? What’s their reaction been to the news today? KEN DILANIAN, MSNBC INTEL & JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Shock and sadness, Jen. Even though you could see this coming, there was some hope that maybe grand jurors in the Eastern District of Virginia would resist and no-bill this case and refuse to indict. That didn’t happen, obviously. I got one text from a longtime source saying this is a sad day for America. People are saying the Justice Department, as we knew it, is dead, is over. That may be a bit of hyperbole because, look, the Justice Department is still going to operate tomorrow in most of its functioning as normal. People are going to go into work. They’re going to investigate and prosecute criminals. But this thing that has happened here, a president essentially urging his Justice Department to bring charges against a political opponent and then replacing a U.S. attorney who refused to do it with a more pliable U.S. attorney and then making that happen, that is a watershed. That is a line that we have crossed now in this country. And Republicans are going to say, Jen, wait a second, didn’t the Biden administration do that? Didn’t the FBI go after Donald Trump? That was completely different. That had no resemblance to what happened here with James Comey. Those were investigations based on the facts and the law pursued by career FBI agents and career prosecutors overseen by a special counsel, totally walled off by any of the political leadership in the Biden administration. Millions of Republicans do not believe this. And that is one of the reasons we are where we are. But it is a fact. And this, what happened with Comey is so much different. The testimony to the Senate at issue has been parsed over by inspectors general and others. And if there is evidence that proves decisively that James Comey intentionally lied to Congress, I’ve never seen it. This is a bare bones indictment. So we don’t know everything that they have. We don’t know everything that they’ve presented to the grand jury. But the indictment on its face does not make the case that he lied. And so, look, a lot of shock and sadness from many people inside and outside the Justice Department tonight, Jen. Yeah. I mean, to your point, the idea.

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