ON TRUMP, COMEY, LAWFARE, AND ‘REVENGE.’ There’s something interesting going on in the argument over the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey. The first thing to say is that even though Comey has now been arraigned and pleaded not guilty, the Justice Department has still not released a more complete account of what Comey allegedly did. That allows Comey’s defenders to say there is nothing there, and the administration’s defenders to say more is coming. We’ll see.
The interesting thing is the fierce argument over whether Democrats helped set this in motion with their relentless prosecutions of Donald Trump. You know what happened. In one of the all-time great examples of prosecutorial overreach and overkill, Trump, then a former president, at one time faced 91 felony counts, which could conceivably have resulted in sentences of 700 years in prison.
It was off-the-scale crazy. But Democrats cheered on the three prosecutors — Alvin Bragg, the elected Democratic district attorney in Manhattan; Fani Willis, the elected Democratic district attorney in Fulton County, Georgia; and Jack Smith, the Biden administration-appointed special counsel — who brought those 91 counts against the former president.
We’re still learning about that time. Just this week has come the revelation that Smith tracked the phone calls of eight Republican senators and one GOP representative from the days around Jan. 6, 2021. Smith’s tactics “crossed every line,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of those tracked.
As the prosecutions went on, many Democrats fantasized about Trump spending the rest of his life behind bars. Some hoped for him to suffer financial disaster. Others just wanted the prosecutions to ensure that he would not be elected president again. In short, the Democratic Party and others on the left were happy to see Trump face a crushing barrage of prosecutions, regardless of the strength of the cases.
Now, some of those same Democrats become angry if one suggests that they contributed to the atmosphere of investigation and (possibly) retributive prosecutions that exist today. A prime example comes from Thursday’s Washington Post. The paper’s editorial board wanted to condemn what it calls Trump’s “dangerous revenge tour.” But the editors apparently felt that for the criticism to be credible, it would also have to acknowledge what Democrats did earlier. So this is how the editorial began:
Anyone surprised by the news that former special Jack Smith collected the private phone records of eight Republican senators as part of his investigation into President Donald Trump was not paying attention to the prosecutor’s hardball methods. Many Democrats still cannot see how their legal aggression against Trump during his four years out of power set the stage for the dangerous revenge tour on which he is now embarked.
Other Smith hardball methods, the Post pointed out, included charging Trump “for official acts he took as president,” seeking a gag order “to limit Trump’s ability to criticize the prosecution,” and rushing the prosecution to get to trial “before the 2024 election.”
One can read this and say it still doesn’t justify indicting James Comey (if, in fact the Comey indictment is unfounded). But everything the Post said is true. Jack Smith really did it. Nevertheless, making that point angered many in ResistanceWorld. They were quick to attack the Post, to say that owner Jeff Bezos has destroyed the paper.
A number of the criticisms, all from people in journalism, are collected in this article. “So Jeff Bezos and [Post publisher] Will Lewis are really turning the Washington Post into garbage,” said one. “This editorial is just humiliating for everyone involved,” said another. “My god, the lede on this editorial is embarrassing,” said a third, adding, “Kay Graham is rolling in her grave,” referring to the Post owner in the paper’s glory days of bringing down Richard Nixon. “Really embarrassing stuff,” said yet another. “You gotta be kidding me.”
Putting aside that kind of partisan sniping, what should a fair observer say about Comey, the Trump prosecutions, and “revenge”? On the one hand, he might say that it was wrong to do what Alvin Bragg did, stretching the law beyond recognition to come up with 34 felony counts against Trump over allegedly falsified business records, even if Bragg won a conviction from a deep-blue Manhattan jury. From there, the fair observer might add that two wrongs don’t make a right, so even though it might be tempting, it would be a bad idea for Trump or other Republicans to prosecute political opponents the way Democrats did in 2023-2024.
On the other hand, the fair observer might also say that when one party, in this case the Democrats, gets away with something, they’ll do it again. For a while, Democrats placed great hope in their lawfare campaign. They were happy with it. But with the election of Trump, it came around to bite them on the backside. Maybe that’s not a bad thing — it might be a disincentive the next time around.
After Comey’s indictment, some sympathetic commentators noted that the experience will cost him a lot of money, take up a lot of his time, exact an emotional cost, and possibly damage his reputation. It’s hard not to laugh at a comment like that. Doesn’t anyone remember the many Trump aides and peripheral figures who faced the same hardships, even as their Democratic accusers congratulated themselves for defending democracy? It was just a couple of years ago. Now, times have changed, and perhaps both sides will swear off political prosecutions.
