'It's frustrating to me, but I can't imagine the country being any different,' Comey said.
WILLIAMSBURG, Va. — Democratic presidential contenders want Wall Street executives locked up for crimes committed on their watch — but former FBI Director James Comey, once the top prosecutor in Manhattan, said it might not be so easy.
"Show me that these bank CEOs, when they engaged in these transactions, knew they were involved in a fraudulent transaction. It is incredibly difficulty to do," Comey said. "It's frustrating to me, but I can't imagine the country being any different," Comey said."I don't want to change the burden of proof, I don't want to lower any of those things. There's lots of things I want to do to try to make it harder for bad people to do bad things, but my reaction is: I'm proud of what I did."
The sentence drew scrutiny not just from liberal Democrats like Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who has vowed to increase the criminal liability of big bank executives, but also from more moderate contenders like Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., a former prosecutor. Klobuchar at the time slammed what she called"two systems of justice."
"It's not open to anybody to say, 'My lawyer has looked at this kilo.' Or, 'My accountant has reviewed this kilo.' Or, 'If you look at footnote 17 of our disclosure, this kilo is mentioned," he said."At the end of the white collar investigation, I will know everyone who was at the table," Comey said."Mortgage backed securities out the wazoo, we will untangle it.
"There has been an increase in the propensity of former prosecutors to pivot into the white-collar defense bar," Curry said in an interview. He said that prosecutors"want to seem serious" — so they don't avoid white-collar prosecutions entirely — but that they also"look across the table at the people who might want to hire" them.
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