Former Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Andrew McCarthy expressed incredulity at former FBI Director James Comey’s inability to answer whether President Donald Trump attempted to “obstruct” the investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. He spoke during an interview Thursday on “The Laura Ingraham Show.”

McCarthy, a contributing editor for National Review, said he could not believe that Comey replied, “I don’t know well enough to answer” whether the president’s words regarding the Flynn investigation constituted an “obstruction of justice” during his testimony on Capitol Hill Thursday. In his opening statement, Comey said that Trump told him, “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”

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“He’s the [former] FBI director, and he knows more than anybody on the planet about obstruction of justice. He was a prosecutor for the better part of 30 years, he was the deputy attorney general, and he’s a very good prosecutor,” McCarthy said. “So the thought that if there had been an obstruction of justice that he had witnessed, and was the only witness to, and knew it well enough to go down and write a memo about it to describe the whole thing — that he couldn’t make a judgment about the whole thing … that means that nobody can.”

Admitting that he was “totally torn” by all the Comey drama because of his long-standing friendship with him, McCarthy noted that the former FBI director “does like the spotlight. I don’t see how anybody could dispute that fact.”

“I think the best example of that is the Hillary press conference in July because that was totally gratuitous. I mean no matter what you thought, a lot of us were unhappy with his legal analysis,” McCarthy said. “A lot of people on the other side were unhappy that he was out speaking publicly about a case that the government was not charging. But what everybody had to agree on was that he didn’t need to do it.”

“It was not to me necessary, appropriate or, at all, in keeping with law enforcement protocols for the FBI director to do a press conference regarding a case that the government was not — our ethic is [that] you keep your big mouth shut until you’re ready to charge somebody formally in court,” McCarthy added.

In his testimony Thursday, Comey said it was his understanding that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is investigation Trump for a potential “obstruction of justice”

“They can investigate it,” McCarthy said, adding he believes it to be “frivolous.”

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“The thing that drives me nuts about this is, I keep hearing legal experts say, ‘Well, the statute says, “interference with an investigation.”‘ And the commentary that goes back and forth consistently leaves out the most important word in the statute, which is ‘corruptly,'” McCarthy said.

“There are no idle words in a criminal statute. The word is in there because it is a core part of the mental element that a prosecutor has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. So it’s not just merely ‘Did you interfere with an investigation?’ It’s ‘Did you do it for a corrupt purpose?'” McCarthy added. “I think that prosecution here would be overkill … It’s clearly not corrupt.”

During his testimony, Comey noted he has long held concerns about his private conversations with Trump and felt uneasy when he felt the president was asking for his “loyalty.” When Ingraham asked McCarthy why he believed Comey never spoke up about his concerns or resigned prior to his firing, McCarthy said it is because “he loves being the FBI director.”

“One of the things that’s hard about these jobs is you’re a subordinate,” McCarthy said. “So … when you get asked to do something that you don’t think is right to do, or you get put in a position that you’re uncomfortable with, your decision there is very simple. You either shut up and salute, or you resign.”