The Day American Justice Died

Eight years after firing the FBI Director for investigating him, Trump now seeks criminal charges against Jim Comey.

The grand jury convening in Virginia this week to consider likely perjury charges against James Comey will be presiding over something far bigger than the historic indictment of an FBI director: the death of American justice.

In January 2017, Trump summoned Comey alone to the White House. Across a small table in the Green Room, he demanded “loyalty” from the man investigating his campaign’s Russian connections. Comey offered honesty instead. Trump fired him four months later, admitting on television it was because of “this Russia thing.”

Now Trump seeks to prosecute Comey for his 2020 testimony defending that same Russia investigation. The president who obstructed justice now charges the witness for describing the obstruction.

We’re witnessing Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre in slow motion—not the dramatic single evening of October 20, 1973, when Nixon’s presidency imploded, but a methodical purge stretched across weeks. U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert refused to prosecute without evidence and was fired on September 19. His deputy expressed concerns about the case’s weakness. Career prosecutors drafted memos opposing charges. One by one, the guardians fall or are pushed aside, until Trump finds his Robert Bork in Lindsey Halligan—his own defense lawyer now leading the prosecution of his enemies.

Back in 2017, I wrote about that loyalty dinner in “The Meddlesome Priest” (you can read it below). Comey compared Trump’s request to drop the Flynn investigation to King Henry II asking his knights, “Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?” The knights murdered Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral. Trump’s modern knights will lynch their victim in the halls of justice in broad daylight using indictments as daggers.

Paid subscribers can scroll down for a deeper dive or access the 2017 piece about Comey below: