BURSTDeputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said former FBI Director James Comey will not be paraded in front of news media for a so-called perp walk when he is arraigned on Wednesday morning.
In a sit-down interview with Fox News Digital, the No. 2 DOJ official denied reporting from MSNBC and other news outlets about a possible perp walk, calling the story “gossip.”
“This is a story generated by MSNBC and other very polarizing news networks to create something that doesn't exist,” Blanche said. "We conduct arrests, the FBI conducts arrests, at every courthouse in this country every single day of the year.”
“Mr. Comey has been directed to appear, and I expect that he will. But the noise from MSNBC and from retired agents or unnamed anonymous sources about perp walks is just that. It's just noise,” Blanche added.
News outlets, including MSNBC, reported late last week that an FBI agent was fired for “refusing to perp walk James Comey.”
FBI Director Kash Patel, who also participated in the interview Tuesday, agreed with Blanche, adding that the reporting is “a detraction from the great work that the department and the FBI teamed up together, again, to countermand the weaponization from prior leadership.”
Patel urged the public to focus on the charges and details of the Comey case that are presented in court Wednesday morning.
"The mainstream media wants to take the eye off the ball and create theater. We're not about theater. We're about producing our results in court,” Patel said in the interview.
“And that's what you're going to see tomorrow start: the revelation of details, and it will be forthcoming in the judicial process, as everyone in America is entitled to, including Mr. Comey, and we want him to have his day in court, and it starts tomorrow."
Comey is expected to appear at a federal court in Alexandria, Va., Wednesday morning to face charges of making a false statement to Congress and obstructing a congressional proceeding. Comey has maintained his innocence and is expected to plead not guilty.
The charges stem from testimony he gave before Congress in 2020 about the FBI’s investigations into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server and alleged ties between President Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia that were ultimately unproven.
Comey was asked during that testimony whether he ever authorized a leak about the Clinton investigation, and he denied doing so. But the indictment alleges that when he gave that testimony, he knew he had authorized another person to leak to the media.
The case has received significant national attention in large part because the former FBI director is a top critic of Trump and the president has often called for his political opponents like Comey to be prosecuted.