Free speech group calls foul play at prosecutors using Comey novel in case against him

PEN America condemns lawyers using passage from thriller to bolster claim ex-FBI director intended to harm Trump A leading US free-expression group has hit out at federal prosecutors’ use of a novel written by former FBI director James Comey in their case accusing him of threatening to kill Donald Trump. “Citing a novel to save an indictment that is constitutionally dubious is a desperate Hail Mary and should be rejected,” said a statement posted on Friday by Mara Gassmann, legal director of PEN America, using a term for a last-second heave in American football. Prosecutors with the Trump administration-led justice department had argued in a filing days earlier that Comey sent coded messages to his followers suggesting they kill an enemy of his citing the fictional protagonist – a federal prosecutor – in his novel FDR Drive. The book’s main character tries to take down a far-right media personality, Sam Buchanan. The filing quotes passages from the book and a Publishers Weekly book review that described a prosecutor who “believes Buchanan went far beyond the protection of the first amendment” of the US constitution, which provides the right to free expression, “when he singled out