WASHINGTON – The Justice Department is preparing to ask a grand jury as soon as Thursday to indict former FBI Director James Comey on allegations that he lied to Congress as prosecutors approach a legal deadline for bringing charges, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Officials are hoping to file the case in the Eastern District of Virginia days after President Donald Trump appealed to his attorney general to charge Comey and other perceived political adversaries, and following Trump’s replacement last week of the office’s top prosecutor with a White House aide who had served as one of his personal lawyers.

Prosecutors have been evaluating whether Comey lied to lawmakers during his Sept. 30, 2020, testimony related to the investigation into ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. The five-year statute of limitations for bringing a case would be next Tuesday, but prosecutors are expected to seek an indictment before a grand jury before then, said the two people, who were not authorized to discuss an investigation by name and spoke on condition of anonymity to The Associated Press.

Comey’s lawyer declined to comment Wednesday and said he had not heard any updates from the Justice Department.

If prosecutors are successful in obtaining an indictment, Comey would become the first former senior government official to face prosecution in connection with one of the president’s chief grievances — the long-concluded investigation into Russia’s election interference that Trump and his supporters have long derided as a “hoax” and “witch hunt” despite multiple government reviews showing Moscow meddled on his campaign’s behalf in 2016.

Any criminal case would almost certainly deepen concerns that the Justice Department under the leadership of Attorney General Pam Bondi, a Trump loyalist, is being weaponized as it pursues investigations of public figures the president regards as his adversaries.

Comey, who was fired as FBI director by Trump months into his first administration, has long been a top target for Trump supporters seeking retribution. Comey was singled out by name in a social media post Saturday night in which Trump complained directly to Bondi that she had not yet brought charges against him,

The White House has moved in recent months to exert control in unprecedented ways over a Justice Department that has historically enjoyed independence in prosecutorial decision-making. The office investigating Comey was thrown into turmoil last week following the resignation of its U.S. Attorney, Erik Siebert, amid Trump administration pressure to bring charges against another of the president’s foes, New York Attorney General Letitia James, in a mortgage fraud investigation.

Trump replaced Siebert with Lindsey Halligan, a White House aide who earlier represented Trump in the investigation into his retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida but who lacks the federal criminal experience that historically accompanies the job of running one of the Justice Department’s most elite prosecution offices.

A grand jury would have to approve any indictment, and though that’s generally a low bar in the criminal justice system, the Trump Justice Department has encountered repeated setbacks in recent months, particularly in pursuing charges related to Trump’s law enforcement intervention in Washington, D.C.

It was not clear what statements to Congress prosecutors might be zeroing in on, and the strength of any case prosecutors might seek to bring is also unclear.

The government’s handling of the Trump-Russia investigation is among the most studied chapters of modern American history, with multiple reviews and reports dedicated to it, and yet prosecutors have not pursued cases against senior FBI officials.

Prosecutors in the first Trump Justice Department declined to prosecute Comey following an inspector general review into his handling of memos documenting his conversations with Trump in the weeks before he was fired. He also was not charged by a special counsel, John Durham, who scrutinized the FBI’s handling of the Trump-Russia investigation and was conducting his inquiry at the time Comey gave his testimony.

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