Libertarian vice presidential nominee William Weld lit into James Comey, saying Monday that his decision to announce a review of new emails was “disgraceful” and that the FBI director and the agency were “off the reservation.”
“They’re totally off the reservation,” Weld told CNN’s Alisyn Camerota Monday on “New Day,” adding that the US Attorney General may need to get involved to rein in Comey.
Weld was the head of the Justice Department’s criminal justice division during the final years of Ronald Reagan’s tenure and said throughout the interview that his criticism of Comey’s conduct was a professional critique, not political.
Pressed by Camerota on what he meant by “off the reservation,” Weld said, “It means there’s no way for Mrs. Clinton to know the evidentiary basis for which they made this update to their investigation, and they’ve said themselves they don’t know. It makes it all the more unreasonable to have waded into these waters in the first place.”
Weld, who is running with Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson, said that if more information is leaked from the FBI before the newest emails are reviewed that Attorney General Loretta Lynch should step in and “order him to stand down.”
Donald Trump and his supporters have seized on news that emails from top Clinton aide Huma Abedin spurred the FBI to look again into Clinton’s use of a private email server, with just days until the election.
The Trump campaign says it’s evidence the FBI director is doing the right thing despite political pressure, but Clinton’s allies say it is may violate federal laws barring the interference of justice officials in political events just before the election.
Weld blasted Trump with a reference to the “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” scene where a mob of villagers lob ridiculous arguments that their victim is a witch.
“Mr. Trump braying about this latest development reminds me of the guy in Monty Python who says ‘She’s a witch, burn her! Burn her!” Weld said, with a mock British accent. “It has no more content than that. And the point of that skit in Monty Python was that those townspeople were ignorant and stupid — not that they were great.”
Camerota asked Weld if he thought that he and Johnson were drawing votes from Clinton and could end up tossing the race to Trump, but he argued that he was confident they were pulling moderate Republican voters away from Trump.
“My appeal is to Republican voters: ‘Think twice before you vote for Trump,” he said.