That's not what I recall Comey saying with respect to his conclusion that HillariousNoMore could not be prosecuted ...
Well, if we are going to get nitpicky which seems to be what you want to do for some reason, Comey did not say "could not be prosecuted", he said no "reasonable prosecutor" would prosecute her and he further explained that intent formed his opinion. Many others disagreed because in fact "intent" is never mentioned in the law but as you say, it is used extensively in the law even though it doesn't appear in the law.
.. what I recall Comey saying is that there was not evidence of actual intent on her part and that she could not be prosecuted without direct evidence of intent ...
And that is different than my explanation that her paranoia of people knowing her business is perhaps why she did what she did and there was no intent to break the law for some nefarious reason like colluding with a foreign government.
That is a pretty close paraphrase .... and my response today is the same as it was the moment I heard him making that ridiculous statement as though it were fact in law ...
And yet you have just gone on to explain how intent is used all the time. You seem to be contradicting yourself.
Every jury instruction in Federal court (whether civil or criminal) includes a charge to the jury containing an instruction and definition on "circumstantial evidence" that provides that the jurors do not have to have direct evidence to prove a fact, but they can find a fact based upon circumstances that would imply the fact existed ... again that's a fair paraphrase.
Which says absolutely nothing about intent so how does that apply here?
Given Comey's background and his own self-delusion of expertise:
He is a fucking liar. Originally Posted by LexusLover
On that we can agree but as one former prosecutor just said, proving he intended to lie might be a tall order. It's why Barr declined to prosecute McCabe, for now. Even though everybody knows McCabe lied, Barr thought the case wasn't strong enough meaning to me at least, he wasn't sure he could prove intent.