“The legal rationales for prosecuting James Comey, Adam Schiff, and Letitia James suggest the president is determined to punish them one way or another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump fired<\/a> 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<\/a> as a justification for the charges against Comey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Those charges, however, seem to stem<\/a> from an entirely different investigation: the FBI’s 2016 probe of the Clinton Foundation. Although the skimpy indictment<\/a> 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That claim is highly doubtful<\/a> for several reasons, as former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy notes<\/a> in a National Review<\/em> 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<\/a> of the Russia probe that concurs with Trump’s chief complaints about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In other words, even if you think that investigation epitomized the “politicization of law enforcement” (as Patel puts it<\/a>), 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<\/a> nor Erik Siebert<\/a>, the former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, thought it was worth pursuing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n …<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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<\/a> that was later overturned<\/a> by a state appeals court, which nevertheless thought she had proven her claims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although Trump has averred<\/a> that Schiff’s conduct as a legislator amounted to “treason,” it plainly does not fit the statutory definition<\/a> of that crime. And whatever you think about the merits<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Casting about for a legal pretext to prosecute Schiff and James, the Justice Department is mulling allegations that both committed mortgage fraud<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n And revenge for actions that were much more appropriate in the first place. <\/p>\n\n\n\n