James Comey indictment: a dark shift in executive power

On Thursday, a federal grand jury in Virginia indicted former FBI director James Comey, charging him with having made false statements to Congress and obstruction of justice. More indictments will follow, we are told.

The charges, no doubt spurred into action by President Trump’s public demand for Attorney General Pam Bondi “to act fast” on the prosecution of Trump’s opponents, have led to an outcry from Democrats. They argue that the President and Bondi are misusing their offices to pursue personal vendettas against Trump’s foes.

Are they right? It is hard to deny that Trump is taking a personal role in directing the actions of government investigators to an extent not seen since Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon used IRS audits as a cudgel against their opponents more than five decades ago. The employees of the Justice Department do work for the president, and he has the power to direct them. But modern presidents have hesitated to do that so blatantly. They fear undermining the rule of law and the appearance of impartiality that is essential to maintaining faith in the executive branch’s actions.

Trump would say that this impartiality disappeared years ago, when he was indicted four times after leaving office. But those indictments were not all done through the Department of Justice, and the ones generally seen as the most egregious and politically targeted came from state and local prosecutors in New York and Georgia. To the extent federal prosecutors went after Trump, it was after following longstanding DOJ procedures of the type Trump and Bondi are currently bulldozing.

But even if you believe that the federal charges against Trump were instances of a Stalinesque “give me the man and I’ll show you the crime”, then wouldn’t the best course of action be to rebuild that norm of prosecutorial neutrality, rather than tearing it down further?

The crime with which Comey is charged is serious. Lying to Congress was once seen, like all other forms of lying under oath, as a significant offence and a threat to the administration of justice. But ever since Bill Clinton infamously got away with lying under oath in the Paula Jones investigation, that norm, too, has steadily degraded. It takes a person of low character to swear an oath to tell the truth and then immediately lie through his teeth. But more and more, the government is populated with such figures, and there is rarely any comeuppance.

If Comey can be proved to have lied under oath, he should be punished for it. But by forcing Comey’s case to the front of the line, Trump may have sped up the punishment but undermined the rule of law in the process. The spectre of an out-of-control president wielding the instruments of government as his personal plaything will only deepen popular dissatisfaction with Trump, especially among those independent voters who hoped for a return to normalcy after the muscular radicalism of the Biden administration

The lesson of Comey’s prosecution should have been: “do not lie under oath — no one is above the law.” Instead, the lesson projected to the people is “do not cross the president” — a much darker vision for what justice means in a republic.

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