James Comey Director Federal Bureau of Investigation discusses the impact of technology on the work of law enforcement. Image via Brookings Institution/Flickr.
President Donald Trump is targeting former FBI Director James Comey in what the administration alleges is a wide-ranging “grand conspiracy” case but which his critics claim is lawfare against his perceived political enemies.
Comey was subpoenaed in an investigation that “has produced more than 130 subpoenas since cranking up last year,” according to Axios, “and targets top officials who worked under former presidents [Barack] Obama and [Joe] Biden.”
They note that the case was assigned to a loyal pro-Trump judge, Aileen Cannon, who is highly controversial for repeatedly making what critics say were partisan rulings in Trump’s favor during highly sensitive cases. In 2023 she threw out the federal prosecution against him in a case where he allegedly stole classified documents, and is now overseeing the grand jury in this case.
“Florida's Southern District also has a more pro-Trump jury pool than the other federal districts that previously handled the cases” involving people targeted by Trump like Comey, Axios added. “An attempted prosecution of Comey failed in the Eastern District of Virginia.”
Trump’s pattern of directing his Justice Department to prosecute people he personally dislikes has aroused tremendous concern. Writing for MS NOW, journalist Steve Benen explained that all of Trump’s prosecutions, such as against Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, have spectacularly failed.
“It was roughly two months ago when the public learned that Donald Trump’s Justice Department had opened a criminal investigation into Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair,” Benen explained. “Even by contemporary standards, the whole endeavor was ridiculous: There was no credible evidence of wrongdoing, and it seemed rather obvious that the administration was targeting Powell because he was on the White House’s growing revenge list.”
Similarly US District Court Judge James Boasberg, when throwing out one of Trump’s cases, harshly criticized the president in his ruling.
“Being perceived as the President’s adversary has become risky in recent years,” Boasberg wrote. “In his second term, Trump has urged the Department of Justice to prosecute such people, and the Department’s prosecutors have listened.”
Even grand juries, which traditionally follow prosecutors’ recommendations, have frequently declined to prosecute the cases Trump brings against his targets.
“This is how grand juries were meant to work,” wrote UC Berkeley Criminal Justice Center Director Chesa Boudin and UC Davis Law Professor Eric S. Fish in The New York Times about the subject, describing grand juries as “a primary security to the innocent against hasty, malicious and oppressive persecution.”
