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The Trump administration first indicted former FBI director James Comey last year on charges so preposterous and brazenly retaliatory that one legal expert said it signaled the "almost wholesale collapse" of the U.S Department of Justice (DOJ). With Trump sycophant Todd Blanche serving as acting attorney general, the department now has indicted Comey a second time, on charges so flimsy they make the first go-around seem almost judicious. What does all of this mean for the rule of law in what used to be the world's foremost democracy?
The answer is grim, with criminal charges now based on a deranged president's whims, with constitutional principles taking a distant back seat. Consider this headline and subheading, which combine to tell the story of how far the Unites States has fallen, almost to banana republic status, in the age of Trump: "Comey's second indictment shows the lengths Blanche will go to please Trump; The latest indictment of the former FBI director is ridiculous, but it's part of an unsubtle pattern for the acting attorney general"
The Justice Department historically has been independent of the White House, even though the attorney general is nominated by the president and serves on his cabinet. But in theory, the president is to have no say in the DOJ's charging and non-charging decisions. But Blanche appears so desperate for an appointment to the full-time AG role that he will do virtually anything Trump wants. That essentially makes Trump both president and prosecutor -- even though as a non-lawyer. he has no qualifications to act in the latter role. Also, it makes those who have incurred Trump's wrath, as Comey did by overseeing the FBI investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, vulnerable to baseless criminal charges as a form of payback.
As Steve Benen, of MS NOW reports, that's not how our system is supposed to work:
When Donald Trump’s Justice Department first indicted former FBI Director James Comey last year, it was a devastating moment for American law enforcement. MS NOW’s Ken Dilanian reported that within the DOJ, many insiders believed it was “among the worst abuses” in the history of the institution. Describing the circumstances as “shocking,” Dilanian added, “It’s hard to overstate how a big a moment this is.”
Indeed, among the most striking things about the Comey indictment was it had barely a pretense of propriety. A failing, desperate and unpopular president wanted a critic to be charged, without regard for merit; he publicly demanded the indictment; and he found officials who were willing to feed his appetite for revenge. It was a tragic lesson that Americans now live in a country where the president’s political opponents are prosecuted at his command.
Alan Rozenshtein, a former DOJ official who now teaches at the University of Minnesota Law School, told The New York Times, “What we are seeing is the almost wholesale collapse of the Justice Department as an organization based on the rule of law.”
The first case ultimately collapsed, but not before a federal judge blasted prosecutors for what he described as an “indict first, investigate later” attitude in the criminal case against Comey. Around the same time, a bipartisan group of former federal prosecutors and judges wrote in a court filing that the case was an “assault” on the justice system.
A reasonable person might expect that Team Trump would learn its lesson and decide to investigate first and indict later -- and to indict based on probable cause, as the Fourth Amendment demands, and not simply on the president's enemies list. But this is an administration led by Donald Trump, who tends to view laws as inconveniences to be ignored, skirted, or broken. Benen writes:
Trump’s DOJ should have been chastened by the condemnations and by the case’s failure. In practice, the shamelessly weaponized department decided to give it another try. MS NOW reported:
The Trump Justice Department has charged former FBI Director James Comey again, following the dismissal of his first indictment due to the illegal appointment of the prosecutor who secured it.
The new indictment involves allegations that Comey made threats against President Donald Trump in a May 2025 social media posting of a picture of shells on the beach that spelled out “8647,” a source familiar with the matter told MS NOW.
I can appreciate why this might seem like an unfortunate attempt at humor, but it’s apparently quite real. While plenty of political figures from both parties have used “86” over the years as a shorthand for rejecting foes, the president and his team argued in apparent seriousness last spring that the former FBI director had used Instagram to call for violence against Trump by way of a seashell-related code.
Could James Comey actually go to prison because of the way sea shells were positioned in a vacation photograph, one that wound up on social media? Some legal experts already have said the case against Comey might not even make it to trial (more on that in an upcoming post), but with Congress and federal courts willing to be pliable on Trump's behalf, many Americans have learned not to put anything past the White House. After all, when the photo in question was published, few could have imagined it would be interpreted as a threat against Trump and lead to legal woes for Comey, Benen writes:
Nearly a full year after the photo first came to light , it’s led to a head-spinning criminal indictment.
Under the circumstances, it’s likely the Trump appointees at the DOJ were looking for a way to charge Comey during former Attorney General Pam Bondi’s tenure, but acting Attorney General Todd Blanche was in a position to either green light the indictment or to quash it. The former Trump defense lawyer apparently chose the former.
It was hardly the first such step. Amid speculation that Blanche wants Trump to nominate him as Bondi’s permanent successor, the Republican lawyer’s campaign has not exactly been subtle.
Over the course of a few weeks, the Blanche-led DOJ has prosecuted a progressive group the president hates, intensified a politically motivated purge, advocated firing squads as a method of federal execution while slamming Joe Biden in gratuitous ways, intervened in support of Trump’s ballroom crusade and indicted a former aide to Dr. Anthony Fauci (a leading figure on the White House’s enemies list) before indicting Comey (another leading figure on the White House’s enemies list.)
At an official event this week, the acting attorney general offered such sycophantic praise for the president he seemed to be auditioning to star in a Trump campaign ad.
Bondi was frightfully bad at her job -- mainly because she was willing to do most anything the president wanted. But for unknown reasons, Trump ousted Bondi on April 2, creating a high-profile job opening. A number of political observers have stated that Bondi might have fallen out of favor because she was slow bringing cases against Trump's enemies. Todd Blanche seems determined not to make that mistake. Benen writes:
No one should want to be an attorney general nominee this badly (under Trump, it’s not even an especially good job anyway), but Blanche’s actions are about as subtle as a sledgehammer.
Time will tell whether the acting attorney general’s efforts pay dividends, though Blanche recently told reporters, “If President Trump chooses to keep me as acting [attorney general], that’s an honor. If he chooses to nominate me, that’s an honor. If he chooses to nominate somebody else and I go back to being the [deputy attorney general], that’s an honor. If he chooses to nominate somebody else and asks me to go do something else, I will say, ‘Thank you very much. I love you, sir.’”
Those words probably strike normal ears as downright weird. But they might be exactly what Trump wants to hear.
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