Trump's Scheme To Indict James Comey Will Crash And Burn

Prosecutors could find no evidence or probable cause, but Trump's newly installed US Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia is going to try to indict James Comey, and it will not go well.

I would be more concerned if he hadn’t already seen this movie so many times before. Donald Trump sends a message to his attorney general telling her to get it moving on the prosecution of his political enemies.

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The AG responds by getting the US attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia to resign because he believed that people should not be prosecuted without evidence. In his place came a Trump loyalist who would never let a silly little thing like the law get in the way.

Which leads us to ABC News reporting:

Earlier this week, prosecutors presented Lindsey Halligan -- Trump’s former personal attorney whom he appointed to lead the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia -- with a detailed memo recommending that she decline to bring perjury and obstruction charges against Comey, the sources familiar with the memo said.

A monthslong investigation into Comey by DOJ prosecutors failed to establish probable cause of a crime -- meaning that not only would they be unable to secure a conviction of Comey by proving the claims beyond a reasonable doubt, but that they couldn’t reach a significantly lower standard to secure an indictment, the sources said.

The reason why the federal government used to virtually never lose cases is that the standard for the DOJ bringing a case was that it had to be airtight.

As Trump has politicized and weaponized the DOJ, the standard has been reduced to virtually nothing beyond doing what the boss wants or losing your job.

The result of this shift in priorities is that the DOJ has been incurring significant losses lately.

It turns out that grand juries are a lot smarter than the Trump administration thought, or the Trump administration is bringing charges that are so weak that they can even meet the threshold for indictment.

I think we all have a pretty good idea of how this attempted prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey is going to go.

Prosecutors don’t think that they have enough evidence for an indictment, and it wouldn’t be surprising if a grand jury agreed.

None of this is meant to excuse the obscene abuse of power that is happening. Even if power is abused incompetently, the damage is the same.

At the same time that the government is about to shut down, the president is trying to get James Comey indicted.

Trump’s priorities are all about Trump, even if his half-baked schemes are going to crash and burn.

What do you think about Trump’s efforts to prosecute Comey? Share your thoughts in the comments below.