Not many legal experts expect this week’s federal indictment of former FBI director James Comey to result in a conviction. Instead, observers say President Donald Trump’s Justice Department finds its credibility wavering amid ongoing efforts to prosecute the president’s political rivals.
The case will be a “challenge for the Justice Department to win,” said The Associated Press. Comey was charged with threatening Trump with an Instagram post showing seashells arranged in the numbers “86 47.” (He later deleted the post.) The message was “ambiguous” at best and given Comey’s background he likely “didn’t intend to convey a threat of violence,” John Keller, a former Justice Department official who prosecuted violent threats, said to the AP. “Broad First Amendment protections” for political speech will make proving the case a “tall burden for the government,” said the outlet.
The indictment is a “grave embarrassment” to the Justice Department, Ken White said at The Popehat Report. Bringing charges over a “mildly sassy arrangement of seashells” demonstrates the “complete collapse” of the department’s integrity. Government attorneys have traditionally been granted a “presumption of regularity,” assuming that they are properly discharging their duties. That tradition is dissolving, and the “road back to credibility for the department will be long and arduous.”
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DOJ ‘got the message’
Trump-friendly outlets and pundits are finding it difficult to defend the charges. The Comey indictment is “bogus,” Andrew McCarthy said at National Review. The Justice Department “shreds its credibility with the courts” when it “abuses power this way” and could invite retaliatory investigations when Democrats next take power. The Instagram post may have been “crass,” but the First Amendment “protects bad and hateful speech,” Jonathan Turley said at Fox News. The indictment probably will not survive a challenge, but it is “likely to fulfill Comey’s narrative” about the dangers posed by the Trump administration.
The indictment shows the Justice Department “got the message” from the recent firing of Attorney General Pam Bondi, Glenn Thrush said at The New York Times. The agency’s “roiled leadership,” including acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, is now sharply focused on the “president’s restless efforts to exact vengeance on his enemies.” That may keep Trump “happy, or at least at bay.” But with Democrats poised to take control of Congress, the department’s leaders may find that the “opinion of a lame-duck president is increasingly not the only one worth heeding.”
‘Whims and petty desires’
The prosecution “will almost certainly fail,” Steve Benen said at MS NOW. But a conviction may not be Trump’s “intended end point.” Instead, the president is making clear he can “orchestrate federal prosecutions based entirely on his whims and petty desires.” Federal prosecutors are getting a message they should “play along with the revenge campaign or face unemployment.”
Republicans may find the case a challenge to their midterm campaigns, said The Washington Post. No candidate “wants to run on ‘I stand with Donald Trump’s retribution tour’” while gas prices are rising, said GOP strategist Barrett Marson to the outlet.
