Call it whatever you like. Retribution. Vengeance. Banana Republicanism.
It’s worse than that.
The expected, and yet still unlikely, indictment of former FBI Director Jim Comey by a just- appointed interim U.S. attorney with no prosecutorial experience is far worse than that.
It is, at least for now, Donald Trump’s most full-blown assault on the rule of law and also against what it means (or meant, in any case) to live in an actual full-blown democracy. It comes only days after Trump went after late-night comic Jimmy Kimmel — in that case personally misusing the FCC with help from FCC Chair Brendan Carr — in a move often compared to mob bossism from the capo de capi in chief.
As we all know, Trump has been trying to get Comey for years, for a decade, ever since Comey was involved in an investigation of what Trump likes to call the RUSSIA HOAX! RUSSIA HOAX! RUSSIA HOAX!
But here’s the most horrible of horribles.
Trump knows that we know what he’s doing — and he doesn’t care. In fact, I’m pretty sure he’s reveling in the fact that we are watching him bring whatever agony he can to Comey and that we’re watching him show his complete ownership of not only the Department of Justice, but also the whole justice system.
Let’s review.
When the federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia determined there was no case, that they couldn’t prove that Comey lied to Congress, Trump fired U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert, because Trump didn’t need a real case. He just needed an indictment.
And after firing Siebert, Trump named the most unlikely of prosecutors to replace him — a prosecutor who had never been a prosecutor before and who had never, of course, prosecuted a case.
We know the name now, likely one to go down in infamy. Lindsey Halligan, who grew up in Broomfield and was a finalist in a Miss Colorado USA contest — a contest (coincidentally?) then owned by one Donald Trump — was selected as interim U.S. attorney.
She had spent recent days in the White House leading the charge to whitewash whatever history is still left at the Smithsonian Institution. The Smithsonian might survive her purge. But what about the justice system?
Somehow, while fighting a deadline against the statute of limitations on Comey’s supposed crime, while listening to her AG Pam Bondi being told by the big boss that she needed to get an indictment pronto, Harrigan brought her case to a grand jury, which actually approved two of three counts related to Comey’s alleged lies to Congress.
It’s a joke. I’m sure Jimmy Kimmel and the rest of the gang will offer several monologues on it. (By the way, have you noticed that Nexstar — which will soon own 9News — and Sinclair, both of which had refused to run Kimmel, are running him again? Trump must be fuming.)
And even though we need the jokes, it’s not actually a laughing matter. This time it’s way more than real. This time, after the indictment, Trump calls Comey “a bad cop” and a “sicko” added to all the other names he has called him over the years. You think that would matter to a jury? Do you think Trump cares? If he ruins the case, well, what is that compared to satisfying his own sicko needs?
The charges have been variously described as absurd prosecutorial overreach, flimsy, a violation of Department of Justice norms, an example of Trump placing personal revenge over the should-never-be-personal rule of law.
I would add travesty or, as Woody Allen’s Fielding Mellish famously said, “I object, your honor! This trial is a travesty. It’s a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham.”
Here’s how the New York Times — OK, a liberal newspaper — described it in its news pages: “It represents the most significant legal step yet by the Trump administration to harry, punish and humiliate a former official the president identified as an enemy, at the expense of procedural safeguards intended to shield the Justice Department from political interference and personal vendettas.”
And yet, here’s how the National Review, the longtime voice of conservative politics, put it while predicting the judge would overturn the charges in the case long before it came to court: “The political animus that fueled the indictment against James Comey is bad, but it may pale in comparison to the incompetence of the Trump Justice Department’s execution of the lawfare ordered by the president.”
From Trump on Friday morning on the White House lawn, celebrating his victory over Comey and over justice: “There’ll be others. I mean, they’re corrupt. These were corrupt radical left Democrats.”
The others whom Trump has already named as potential targets include George Soros (of course); Reid Hoffman, fellow billionaire and major Democratic donor; New York AG Letitia James, who successfully took Trump to trial; and Sen. Adam Schiff, who led Trump’s first impeachment trial. He wants to go after Disney for reinstating Kimmel. He’s already after Harvard, after the New York Times. Barack Obama? Hillary Clinton? The so-called Biden Crime Family?
The list is long and, as far as I can tell, endless. Trump just signed a memorandum for a whole-of-government effort at combating organized domestic terrorist groups, meaning people he can’t stand and/or Democrats.
Comey took the news well and answered this way: “We will not live on our knees, and you shouldn’t either.”
And in referring to his daughter, Maurene, who was canned from her own DOJ post this summer, he added: “Somebody that I love dearly recently said that fear is the tool of a tyrant, and she’s right, but I’m not afraid, and I hope you’re not either.”
But we need to be afraid. We need to be afraid of the rapid-fire Trumpian turn against justice. Also against truth and the American way.
I’m not necessarily a huge fan of Comey, but it sounds like his family was dedicated to serving justice being taken down by a Trump family better known for corruption, graft and its demagogic leader’s attack on the country he claims — I always look for the wink — to love. I mean, who can forget Trump not only saluting the flag, but kissing it? One writer called it the Judas Kiss.
But here’s the thing that gives Trump away, and it is exactly his point.
In an excellent piece by Andrew Egger from The Bulwark, he pointed out that Trump didn’t have to name one of his former lawyers with no prosecutorial experience to the job. There were lawyers, presumably more competent lawyers, still somehow happy to work for Trump. One of these lawyers might have even made a competent case against Comey.
But that wasn’t what Trump wanted. Trump named someone along the lines of
Bondi, of Hegseth, of Kennedy, of Patel and the others who would do his dirty work.
He wanted to fire the prosecutor he called a “WOKE RINO.” And picked Halligan because he wanted everyone to know that he wanted someone who believed more in Trumpism than in the rule of law. Halligan brought the case. None of her new friends in the Eastern District — you know, those deep staters — signed the indictment.
The judge, Michael Nachmanoff, a Biden appointee, will also know. And when he throws out the case, Trump will claim it was all rigged.
He’d be right. But not about the judge. He’s the rigger, of course. And who knows what part of the American experiment he’ll try to rig in his favor next.
The Colorado Sun is a nonpartisan news organization, and the opinions of columnists and editorial writers do not reflect the opinions of the newsroom. Read our ethics policy for more on The Sun’s opinion policy. Learn how to submit a column. Reach the opinion editor at [email protected].
