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The events of the past week in Virginia mark a dark new stage in President Trump’s effort to turn federal law enforcement into a personal tool of oppression and vengeance. He is undermining a core promise of the American justice system: the fair and equal enforcement of the law.
| …fifty-seventh verse same as the first… |
There are times when I miss practicing law, because — right now — there are few more important posts for defending the rule of law and the integrity of the American system of justice than on James Comey’s defense team.
Let’s be clear — perfectly clear — about what happened last week. On Thursday, a federal grand jury, acting on the urging of President Trump’s Department of Justice, indicted Comey, the former director of the F.B.I. This indictment was the culmination of a transparently vindictive campaign by Trump to get revenge on his political enemies, no matter the facts or the law.
In other words, French is claiming that what Trump and the DOJ are doing is unprecedented in US history. Now, make no mistake about the troublesome nature of this indictment and how the White House orchestrated the events. Former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy, who is no fan of Comey and was a strong critic of the "Russiagate" investigation, has called the indictment "incoherent" and predicts that the charges could well be dismissed long before the case could go to trial.
Yet, the Comey indictment is ironic in that while the legacy media condemns the indictment against him, it heaped praise on him when he pursued highly questionable criminal charges against others and used the justice system as a weapon against innocent people. For example, his case against investment banker Frank Quattrone [charges dismissed in 2007] was built on lies and false accusations, something that Candice E. Jackson and I wrote about on the Mises Wire more than 20 years ago.
THE REGIME’S DOUBLE STANDARD ON LAW — AND WHY IT MATTERS
As I wrote earlier, the Comey indictment is troubling, given Trump’s previous statements and the obvious fact that he all-but-ordered the US Department of Justice to secure an indictment no matter what. In fact, as Andrew McCarthy has written, this point alone probably is Comey’s best defense, and I believe that in the end, no jury will convict Comey—if the case even goes to trial. It may be easy to twist the malleable federal criminal statutes -- which is why the DOJ was able to fashion an indictment against Comey -- but even a federal jury is likely to see this case as a bridge too far....
The irony here, however, is that people like French and his employer have recalled Lavrentiy Beria’s infamous boast, "Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime" as though it only applies to what Trump has done. Yet, if any publication has proven that the spirit of Beria lives in American "justice," it is the New York Times.
During the 1980s, it was the NYT that championed Rudy Giuliani’s predatory Wall Street prosecutions, conducted while he held the US Attorney position that Comey would later hold in New York City. Paul Craig Roberts and Daniel Fischel have documented how Giuliani and his underlings engaged in lawless behavior, committing felony after felony by leaking secret federal grand jury testimony to the NYT and the Wall Street Journal. Not surprisingly, the NYT editorial board never objected to any of Giuliani’s law breaking even though it was done expressly to deny the accused fair trials. In fact, his very abuse of the law inspired the NYT to publish a near-puff piece as the guy who gets things done....
CONCLUSION
Ever since Donald Trump was elected in 2016, he has battled not only with the Washington establishment but also with unelected officials in the government, something Connor O’Keeffe noted in his recent article. The clash between Trump and the sanctimonious Comey became inevitable as Comey first attempted to find a way to indict Trump and Trump paying him back.
Contrary to what David French, the NYT, and the usual suspects are claiming, we are seeing the culmination of lawfare that has been going on in this country for many years. Rudy Giuliani and James Comey built their careers on abusive prosecutions and using the power of their offices to skirt the law, and Alvin Bragg and Leticia James have extended that practice to the state level.
None of this needed to happen, but here we are. Two years ago, this page warned that by trying to imprison Donald Trump, Democrats were creating the conditions for a Third World banana republic. We are now there, and it won’t stop with the Comey indictment. Yes, one can lay blame with Trump, but Comey also has played a role in breaking down the guardrails to justice, and now all of us must pay.
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