Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
“Even as the president blows up drug boats, the government routinely declines to pursue charges against smugglers nabbed by the Coast Guard.”
https://reason.com/2026/01/02/the-doj-thinks-cocaine-couriers-are-not-worth-prosecuting-trump-thinks-they-deserve-to-die/
The reason so many Trump prosecutions are failing to get indictments is because he is charging people with weak evidence and for political reasons.
“Grand juries have emerged as a major stumbling block for Trump’s drive to use the criminal courts to exact retribution on his perceived political foes.
Federal grand juries operate in near-total secrecy and decide whether prosecutors can bring a criminal indictment in the first place. Unlike trial juries, they don’t need to be unanimous; rather, a majority of their 16 to 23 members must agree to return an indictment. And their only job is to determine if the Justice Department has brought a plausible case — a relatively low standard which led to the cliche that prosecutors could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich.
But in the Trump era, grand juries are no longer a rubber stamp. Instead, they’ve become a headache for prosecutors trying to advance controversial Trump policies like mass deportations and militarizing law enforcement. Dozens of recent cases in Washington, D.C., have been met with so-called “no bills” — the shorthand for a grand jury declining to return a bill of indictment. And grand juries in other jurisdictions have turned down high-profile cases that Trump has prioritized.
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The administration also seems to be losing because it’s pushing for indictments in cases with weak evidence, and due to the unpopularity in some parts of the country of tough tactics against protesters and of policies like Trump’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants. and
U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan recently marveled at the “apparent prosecutorial machinations” at work, emphasizing the “unprecedented” actions prosecutors have taken to bring cases — even when grand juries have rebuffed them.
“Most troubling, prosecutors have rushed to charge cases before properly investigating them,” the Washington-based Biden appointee lamented.
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The Constitution’s requirement that a grand jury approve serious criminal cases was adopted as a safeguard against executive power and political prosecutions. The move stemmed from what many revolutionaries regarded as political trials instituted by British authorities.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/07/trump-grand-juries-letitia-james-comey-indictments-00713579
“The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution says, with only a handful of exceptions: “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury.” In practice, though, grand juries rarely fail to indict. The entire process is nonadversarial, meaning prosecutors make their case to jurors without an opposing attorney making any counterarguments, and the burden of proof is much lower than it would be at trial. As the old saw has it, a prosecutor could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. But failing to get indictments has been a hallmark of the second Trump administration.”
https://reason.com/2025/11/16/less-indictable-than-a-ham-sandwich/
Trump’s Appeal of His New York Convictions Highlights the Absurdity of Alvin Bragg’s Convoluted Case
https://reason.com/2025/10/28/trumps-appeal-of-his-new-york-convictions-highlights-the-absurdity-of-alvin-braggs-convoluted-case/
“Like Patel, Bondi was confirmed after promising to be guided by the facts and the law rather than the president’s grudges. “The partisanship, the weaponization, will be gone,” she declared. “America will have one tier of justice for all….There will never be an enemies list within the Department of Justice.”
Blanche sang the same tune during his confirmation hearing. “Politics should never play a role in the Department of Justice,” he said. “We will work to restore the American people’s faith in our justice system.”
Whether or not Bondi and Blanche meant those words when they said them, the president plainly does not share the vision they described. “They’re all guilty as hell,” Trump said in the Truth Social rant addressed to Bondi, which mentioned Adam Schiff, the not-yet-indicted Democratic senator from California (whom Trump also mentioned on Wednesday), along with Comey and James—a list to which he has now added three more names. Guilty of what? The Justice Department’s job, as Trump sees it, is to figure that out.”
https://reason.com/2025/10/16/trump-adds-3-more-names-to-the-list-of-enemies-he-wants-the-justice-department-to-prosecute/
“The legal rationales for prosecuting James Comey, Adam Schiff, and Letitia James suggest the president is determined to punish them one way or another.
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Trump fired Comey in 2017 out of anger at the FBI investigation of alleged ties between his 2016 campaign and the Russian government. In the years since, Trump has made no secret of his desire to punish Comey for that “witch hunt,” which Patel cited as a justification for the charges against Comey.
Those charges, however, seem to stem from an entirely different investigation: the FBI’s 2016 probe of the Clinton Foundation. Although the skimpy indictment is hazy on this point, it implicitly alleges that Comey authorized the disclosure of information about that investigation and then falsely denied doing so during a 2020 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.
That claim is highly doubtful for several reasons, as former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy notes in a National Review essay that describes the indictment as “so ill-conceived and incompetently drafted” that Comey “should be able to get it thrown out on a pretrial motion to dismiss.” McCarthy’s take is especially notable because he wrote a book-length critique of the Russia probe that concurs with Trump’s chief complaints about it.
In other words, even if you think that investigation epitomized the “politicization of law enforcement” (as Patel puts it), that does not necessarily mean the charges against Comey are factually or legally sound. In fact, the case is so shaky that neither career prosecutors nor Erik Siebert, the former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, thought it was worth pursuing.
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Schiff, a longtime thorn in Trump’s side, spearheaded his first impeachment and served on the House select committee that investigated the 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol. James sued Trump for business fraud in New York, obtaining a jaw-dropping “disgorgement” order that was later overturned by a state appeals court, which nevertheless thought she had proven her claims.
Although Trump has averred that Schiff’s conduct as a legislator amounted to “treason,” it plainly does not fit the statutory definition of that crime. And whatever you think about the merits of James’ lawsuit, the fact that both a judge and an appeals court agreed Trump had committed fraud by overvaluing his assets suggests her claims were at least colorable.
Casting about for a legal pretext to prosecute Schiff and James, the Justice Department is mulling allegations that both committed mortgage fraud by claiming more than one home as a primary residence. Although it’s not clear there is enough evidence to convict either of them, that is beside the point as far as Trump is concerned.
As the president sees it, Schiff and James, like Comey, deserve to suffer because they wronged him. “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!” he told Bondi.
Judging from the Comey case, Bondi probably will follow the president’s marching orders, to the cheers of his most enthusiastic supporters. But the rest of us have ample cause to conclude that Trump has conflated justice with revenge.”
And revenge for actions that were much more appropriate in the first place.
https://reason.com/2025/10/01/demanding-charges-against-his-enemies-trump-conflates-justice-with-revenge/
Over the 20th century, the U.S. developed norms that separated the justice system from the whims of the president. Trump is breaking that down and weakening the United States as a strong democracy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUw20SsfosQ
Trump is using U.S. sanction power to punish those who prosecute people Trump likes politically. This isn’t an act of justice, but an act of defending those who try to coup democracies. He did something similar when he pardoned the January 6th attackers who tried to end U.S. democracy.
“The U.S. announced new sanctions on the wife of Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes on Monday, the latest move in the Trump administration’s effort to object to the prosecution of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.
The Trump administration has repeatedly targeted de Moraes for overseeing the prosecution of Bolsonaro, who was convicted of organizing a coup to remain in office following his electoral loss to now-President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2022. A panel of Supreme Court justices, including de Moraes, voted earlier this month to sentence the far-right populist leader, an ally of Trump’s, to a 27-year prison sentence.
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The Brazilian government called the move “a new attempt of undue interference in Brazilian internal affairs,” accusing the U.S. government of pursuing “the politicization and distortion” of the Magnitsky Act.
“This new attack on Brazilian sovereignty will not achieve its goal of benefiting those who led the failed coup attempt, some of whom have already been convicted by the Supreme Federal Court. Brazil will not bow to this latest aggression,” Brazil’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/22/bolsonaro-prosecution-us-sanctions-00575122
Trump is demanding that the Justice Department make unjust, political prosecutions. This is yet another dent in U.S. democracy hammered in by Donald Trump.
“President Donald Trump publicly vented at Attorney General Pam Bondi.., saying the lack of criminal charges against top adversaries was “killing our reputation and credibility.”
“We can’t delay any longer,” Trump posted on Truth Social in a message directed to “Pam.” “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!” He specifically lamented the lack of criminal charges against Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, three of his most prominent political antagonists.”
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“Trump capped his message to Bondi by accusing Democrats of impeaching him twice and indicting him five times “over nothing.” In 2023, Trump was charged in criminal cases that accused him of seeking to subvert the 2020 presidential election, corrupt Georgia’s election process, hoard classified information at Mar-a-Lago after his first term and cover up a hush money payment scheme.
Only the hush money case, brought by Manhattan prosecutors, reached a jury, which found Trump guilty of 34 felony counts. Two of the cases, brought by special counsel Jack Smith, were dropped after Trump won the 2024 election. And the Georgia case remains mired in pretrial dysfunction, with lead prosecutor Fani Willis recently disqualified over a conflict of interest.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/20/trump-bondi-truth-social-00574380?utm_content=politico/magazine/Politics&utm_source=flipboard
“By law, Clayton will be allowed to serve as interim U.S. attorney for 120 days. If the White House doesn’t nominate anyone else by the end of that interim period, the judges of the federal district court in Manhattan could vote to appoint him to remain in the job. He could then serve until the Senate confirmed a nominee — and if Trump wanted Clayton to remain in the job, the president could simply not nominate anyone else.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/18/trump-schumer-clayton-prosecutor-00299505