A look at the Trump-Comey relationship and the indictment against the former FBI director

WASHINGTON (AP) — The indictment of former FBI Director James Comey represents the first criminal case against a perceived adversary of President Donald Trump so far in this administration and comes on the heels of his public demands for Justice Department prosecutions of people he dislikes.

The criminal case, legally speaking, centers on a false statement Comey is alleged to have made to Congress five years ago. But it also represents the latest chapter in a long-strained relationship whose bitter dynamics burst into public view when Trump fired Comey amid an intensifying FBI investigation into his 2016 presidential campaign.

Since then, there’s been name calling, revelations of secret memos, a bitingly critical memoir and calls by the president for retribution against people — like Comey — who he is convinced have wronged him.

A look at the allegations in Thursday’s indictment, as well as at the history of the Trump/Comey relationship:

What’s the backstory?

Comey was FBI director when Trump was inaugurated in January 2017. Comey had been nominated nearly four years earlier by President Barack Obama.

It was a time when the bureau was entangled in American politics in extraordinary ways, with Comey facing criticism for his handling of the FBI investigation into Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while also overseeing a separate inquiry into ties between Russia and Trump’s successful 2016 presidential campaign.

The relationship was fraught from the start, with Comey briefing Trump weeks before he took office on the existence of uncorroborated and sexually salacious gossip in a dossier of opposition research compiled by a former British spy.

In their first several private interactions, Comey would later reveal, Trump asked his FBI director to pledge his loyalty to him and to drop an FBI investigation into his administration’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn. Trump also asked Comey to publicly reveal that Trump himself was not under investigation as part of the broader inquiry into Russian election interference, something Comey opted not to do.

Comey was abruptly fired in May 2017 while at an event in Los Angeles, with Trump later saying that he was thinking about “the Russia thing” when he decided to terminate him. The firing was investigated by Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller as an act of potential obstruction of justice.

What’s happened since then?

The firing hardly removed Comey from public view.

A week after being terminated, Comey shared with a close friend a contemporaneous memo of an Oval Office conversation with Trump that he said unnerved him and authorized the friend to describe its contents to a reporter. The full batch of memos that Comey surreptitiously maintained while working for Trump was subsequently released by Congress.

Comey in 2018 published a memoir, “A Higher Loyalty,” that painted Trump in deeply unflattering ways, likening him to a mafia don and characterizing him as unethical and “untethered to truth.”

Trump, for his part, continued to angrily vent at Comey as the Russia investigation led by Mueller dominated headlines for the next two years and shadowed his first administration. On social media, he repeatedly claimed that Comey should face charges for “treason” — an accusation Comey dismissed as “dumb lies” — and called him an “untruthful slime ball.”

Since leaving the FBI, Comey and his decision-making have been carefully scrutinized as part of multiple government investigations. That includes a harshly critical inspector general report examining his handling of the memos he kept of conversations with Trump. But until now, no prosecutor has pressed forward with any criminal case against Comey or any other senior government official in connection with the Russia saga.

What the indictment alleges

Of note, the sparse two-count indictment — consisting of charges of making a false statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee and obstructing a congressional proceeding — appears to have nothing to do with the substance of the Russia investigation.

Instead, it accuses Comey of having lied to the committee when asked whether he had authorized anyone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source of information related to investigations into either Trump or Clinton. Though the indictment does not specify the subject Comey is alleged to have lied about, it appears through context to have to do with Clinton.

Comey, in a video he posted after his indictment, said: “My heart is broken for the Department of Justice but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system, and I’m innocent. So let’s have a trial.”