This was already an unusual move on the part of the grand jury; The cliché is that a decent prosecutor can force a man to charge a ham sandwich. (Well, with some notable exceptions.) Prosecutors then revised the indictment to include only two other charges. Instead of properly presenting the indictment again to the grand jury, they submitted an amended version to the court.
Lindsey Halligan, the rookie interim U.S. attorney for eastern Virginia, confirmed that only the grand jury foreman and one other member saw the final indictment when it was finalized Sept. 25. Federal prosecutors argued that this is not a new indictment and that the charges are still valid. Comey's lawyers, as you can imagine, took a much less lenient approach to this issue.
“There is no indictment,” said Michael Dreeben, one of Comey’s lawyers. reportedly said Nakhmanov after the recognition of the Ministry of Justice. Although this may seem like a formality, it is actually very important. The Fifth Amendment prohibits the prosecution of felonies “except when presented or indicted by a grand jury.” As Comey's legal team explained to the judge, the former FBI director is essentially being prosecuted on a new indictment that no grand jury has approved.
To understand how it all got to this point, we have to go back in time to this summer. Trump has repeatedly pressured officials to pursue criminal charges against figures such as Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, the latter of whom was also indicted in recent months on dubious mortgage fraud charges. California Senator Adam Schiff and Congressman Eric Swalwell, who played key roles in Trump's impeachment during his first term, are facing similar investigations that have not yet resulted in charges.
