The indictment of James Comey is not a victory for justice but a cautionary tale about what happens when a president turns prosecutors into political instruments. Donald Trump has spent years nursing grievances against the former FBI director who presided over the early Russia investigation. Now, back in office, Trump is pressing the Justice Department to settle his personal scores. The result is an indictment so thin, and so obviously tainted by presidential meddling, that it exposes Trump more than it damages Comey.
From the start, the case has been shaky. A grand jury even refused to endorse one of the charges pitched by prosecutors. What remains is a pair of counts built on disputed testimony and procedural quibbles, the sort of allegations normally handled administratively or dismissed altogether. No amount of legal embroidery can conceal how weak the case is. Even in a Virginia forum that Trump’s team assumed would be favorable, conviction is unlikely.
That is because the indictment looks less like law and more like revenge. Trump has made no secret of his wish to see Comey punished. He has crowed about it at rallies, demanded it on social media and ordered his subordinates to deliver. The prosecutors who went along are not acting as independent officers of the law but as political courtiers, putting loyalty to the president above loyalty to the Constitution. That debasement of the Justice Department is more serious than anything alleged against Comey.
None of this means Comey should be treated as a saint. His public career has been marked by questionable decisions. His interventions in the Hillary Clinton email case in 2016 were breaches of long-standing norms that arguably altered the course of a presidential election.
His handling of his own memos after being fired by Trump raised legitimate concerns about judgment. These choices damaged his reputation and deserve continued scrutiny. But they are not the subject of this indictment for good reason: They are not crimes.
By elevating minor procedural matters into felony charges, the administration has revealed both its weakness and its spite. It is one thing to disagree with Comey’s decisions; it is another to contort the justice system into a weapon against him. That is the hallmark of a vengeful leader, not a confident one. And the American public can see it.
The irony is that Trump’s obsession makes him appear petty and smaller. With wars abroad, economic strains at home and deep divisions tearing at the national fabric, he chooses to devote energy to old grudges. A president with vision would move forward. A president consumed by ego cannot.
Comey, for his part, has already moved on. He has reinvented himself as a bestselling writer of mystery thrillers and is already three volumes into a new career. One can almost imagine how a Comey novel would end this tale: a vengeful ruler, a sloppy prosecution and a jury unwilling to play along. The plot may yet prove prophetic.
Comey’s past missteps may be real, but Trump’s abuse of power is the greater scandal. The rule of law is too important to be warped into a tool of presidential revenge. The Comey indictment deserves condemnation. History will remember it as a misfire. ■
The Democrats led by their Trump-hating media have now entered the theater of the absurd. The above editorial is so counter-factual and so biased that it leaves me with only two choices in which to respond: laugh or cry. I’m choosing the former.
The truth about Comey, and he’s only a small part of the witch hunt which I once thought ended several hundred years ago, will be uncovered in his upcoming trial. There’s not enough space to lay out all of his crimes but they include Comey signing off on three FISA warrants which he must have known to be lies and which his signature testified to the exact opposite. Those war-rents allowed the FBI to illegally invade and spy on Trump’s campaign smack in the middle of a presidential campaign against none other than Joe Biden.
Then there was Comey’s lying to Congress to cover up his perfidy, also a crime, and as we know the cover up is always the worst part of the criminal’s behavior.
The Democrats went bad when they allowed their hate of Donald Trump to overwhelm any decency that they still possessed. What they did when they weaponized the FBI and the DOJ to win an election against a man they despised and still do, has done tremendous damage our democracy and our electoral system. Hate always begets hate and this hate destroyed confidence in our institutions, initiated assassinations against our leaders, two against Trump himself, and one which resulted in the recent assassination of Charlie Kirk.
Did Comey know what he was doing? Of course he did, proven by the fact that as he was walking on the beach he ran across 8647, photographed it and then sent it to the media. For the record, 8647 means assassinate Trump. Whether or not Comey is convicted for his crimes or not this man is a moral degenerate. Those who support him, either out of ignorance or even worse a compulsive none-ending Salem witch hunt agenda fueled by fear and hate, are at least destroying the greatest country in the world or much worse.
What they are doing is destroying our democracy, electoral system and wiping out any sense of us still being united as Americans. These aren’t procedural matters, this is not payback, this is not revenge, this is an attempt to save the democratic system that we all once benefited from.