After James Comey, Who’s Next on Trump’s Revenge Tour?

0:06Hi, Ruth. Hi, Tyler. I wanted to talk to you today about Trump's revenge tour and kind of what that entails. So I guess to start, I mean, Donald Trump was investigated throughout his first presidency, and then he faced a number of indictments during the Biden presidency. And so I feel like most Republicans, when they see Trump now going after his perceived political enemies, they view it less as outrageous and more as Trump kind of just going tit for tat. So I'm wondering what your argument is against this. Like, why does Trump's targeting of officials like the former FBI director James Comey feel different to you?

0:42Why is this beyond the pale? Oh, my goodness. Where to start with how far beyond the pale is it? Let us assume for the moment, as lawyers say, that President Biden did weaponize the Justice Department and others allied with Democrats. That's, you know, Letitia James in New York, Alvin Bragg in New York, Bonnie Willis in Georgia weaponized the Justice Department and other parts of law enforcement against Donald Trump. That does not justify. It is against the rules of the Justice Department to do tit for tat and to retaliate by weaponizing the criminal law against your political enemies. So that's the short part of what could be a very long answer about what's wrong here.

1:38So even if those prosecutions, I mean, I'm just playing the, you know, the MAGA Republican here, even if those prosecutions were bogus, you don't respond to bogus prosecutions with more bogus prosecutions. didn't we all learn about two wrongs and let me just be clear there are things in the various cases against then former president trump that i disagreed with but um the first part we'll say is that you know what are all of our mothers told us right which is two wrongs don't make a right but even if they did the degree to which this white house is directing the justice department to go after the president's political enemies.

2:21And the degree to which this Justice Department is complying, you know, saluting and saying, how many counts would you like, Mr. President, is just beyond anything we have seen before in the 155-year history of the Justice Department.

2:43That's Ruth Marcus, a contributing writer at The New Yorker who focuses on law, the courts, and the rule of law under President Trump. The second Trump term has often felt like a continuation of the first. Chaotic, deeply personal, and rooted in Trump's desire to settle scores. The indictment of James Comey, the former FBI director who was fired by Trump in 2017, is the most high-profile example yet of what Trump himself has branded as a kind of revenge tour. It's part of a broader pattern that has included firings inside the Department of Justice, pressure campaigns against state attorneys general, and the targeting of prominent individuals outside the government.

3:21I wanted to talk with Ruth about what Comey's case actually involves, why Trump appears so intent on pursuing former adversaries, and how both the government and the broader political system are responding to this new vengeful phase of his presidency. This is The Political Scene. I'm Tyler Foggett, and I'm a senior editor at The New Yorker.

3:47So before we get into the details of the Comey indictment, for which he'll be arraigned on Thursday, I have to ask, why Comey? I mean, this is a guy who I haven't really thought about since Trump fired him in 2017. And I know that Biden pardons some people at the end of his presidency, which sort of limited Trump's ability to go after, say, Hunter Biden. But he didn't pardon special counsel Jack Smith, who brought multiple felony indictments against Trump during the Biden years. So, I mean, maybe we'll see Trump go after Jack Smith eventually. But why are we starting with Comey? Like, is Trump going in chronological order?

4:23Alphabetical order? That's true. So you say that you've kind of forgotten about James Comey. But let me say this about Donald Trump. He hasn't. This is a man who has of many grudges and he holds them and he does not let go of them. He's been furious about Comey's role in the Russia investigation since kind of before he fired him in May of 2017. And he has been pushing his Justice Department during his first term and now in his second to go after him. So that's explanation number one. Explanation number two is there was a deadline here. To the extent that there is a viable case against Comey, spoiler alert, there isn't.

5:12But to the extent there is a viable case against Comey, the statute of limitations on it was going to expire in just a few days after the indictment was handed down. So it was a rush job. If he was going to go after Comey, this was the moment. I wonder if you can remind us of exactly what Comey's role in the Russia investigation was, because I think, you know, this idea of Trump and Comey having beef, obviously, that's something that, you know, we hear about a lot. But at the same time, I feel like there are a lot of Democrats who hate Comey. I mean, it's funny to think of him as, you know, a rival of Trump's when I think you have a lot of people on the left who think of Comey as someone who helped Trump into office, whether he wanted to or not.

5:56Well, you've hit on the ultimate irony that James Comey is Exhibit A, but there are many other letters in the alphabet to comment that I am worried. But that James Comey is Exhibit A and indictment number one in the Trump retribution tour, as you call it. because if there is a single person who Trump might be able to thank for his having been elected in 2016, it would be James Comey, I would say. Comey's intervention to announce a revived look at Hillary Clinton late in the campaign, arguably, and this is why, as you say, many Democrats remain furious at him, could have been determinative of the outcome of the election.

6:47Nonetheless, Trump hates him because he thought the FBI unfairly looked at him, targeted him, raised the question of this, what turned out to be a flawed, you know, mostly invented dossier about his supposed activities relating to Russia and sexual predilections, I guess is the word. And he held Comey responsible for not having ended this investigation, for having flagged this dossier to him, for having refused, and this is, you know, the ultimate chumps in, right, refused to pledge loyalty to him during that famous dinner they had at the White House early in the first term and for essentially launching what became the Mueller investigation that dogged him for at least a piece of his first term.

7:50So Comey is not the only focus of his ire, but he has been a focus of his ire. If you look at Attorney General Bill Barr's memoir that was published a few years ago, he talks extensively about how Trump was demanding that he prosecute Comey. And finally, Trump found himself an attorney general who was willing to do that. So let's talk about the charges, because many legal analysts, including yourself, have said that they seem pretty flimsy. But can you explain as best you can what exactly Comey is being charged with? Well, yes and no. I'm going to do it as best I can, but I have to tell you, and I've talked to so many experienced prosecutors about this, no one can tell for sure what precisely is the offense.

8:43We may get more clarity at the arraignment. Comey is entitled to ask for what's called a bill of particulars to spell out the bare bones of this indictment. But there are two counts in the indictment. The grand jury tellingly did not come up with the necessary 12 votes. That's 12 out of 24 votes to return an additional third count. But it came up with two counts, which appear to be related. One has to do with allegedly false testimony that Comey gave to the Senate Judiciary Committee back in 2020. In that, that testimony was about whether he had leaked or authorized the leak of information about an investigation.

9:38The question seemed to be referencing an investigation into Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation. And in that questioning, which was by Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz, Senator Cruz referred back to even earlier testimony from 2017 in which Comey had denied authorizing any leak. And what Comey said in the 2020 testimony was, I stand by my testimony from 2017. Now, that testimony, and you asked me the question, so I'm going to go into some of the details of it, but it's really confusing and mind numbing, so I apologize in advance about this. As I read the indictment, that count, which quotes Senator Cruz and his question and Comey's answer to his question, refers to a dispute over whether Comey authorized or didn't authorize or knew at some point about whether his deputy, a guy named Andrew McCabe, had authorized the provision of information about the Clinton administration.

10:54investigation to a then reporter at the Wall Street Journal, Devlin Barrett. But it's not completely clear that this is what the indictment refers to, even though it quotes the Cruz question, because McCabe was apparently never interviewed by this grand jury. And so there are some people who think that even though Cruz asked this question referring explicitly to McCabe's testimony, that it actually refers to another potential issue where a Columbia law professor named Dan Richman, who's a friend and ally of Comey's, may have been authorized or was authorized by him to provide some information about that will you pledge me your loyalty dinner.

11:44So the fact that experienced prosecutors look at this indictment and cannot tell what the allegedly false statement is gives you some sense of why so many people think the indictment is so flimsy. That's count number one, false statement. Count number two refers back to this same Senate Judiciary Committee testimony from 2020 and alleges that the misleading testimony there also constituted an obstruction of Congress. And you know how much this administration cares about Congress being able to do its job, ha ha. So it basically seems to take the same episode and turn it into two counts. Turning one episode into two counts is kind of par for the course, no big deal, but we still do not have any specifics, any granularity, any argument within the indictment of why this was knowingly false, which is one requirement for it, and why it was material.

12:50In other words, really something that was important to and mattered to congressional questioners. I mean, on one hand, this seems, I mean, as you say, pretty flimsy. It's hard to even understand what exactly Comey allegedly did wrong. On the other hand, even though it seems like the prosecution of Comey is very much politically motivated, you do have at least part of this grand jury, you know, which is separate from Trump, deciding to move ahead with at least two of the counts. So I guess what are we supposed to make of that? Like, is there any reason to think that there might be something substantive here just because like you have a group of people who are not part of the White House thinking, hey, yeah, maybe there should be a trial?

13:35So under ordinary circumstances, without ordinary Justice Department, there's something that judges call the presumption of regularity, that when the Justice Department comes in and says, we have this case and we presented it to a grand jury and they found probable cause to believe that a crime was committed, that there's some there there, as you suggest. And further than that, an ordinary Justice Department with ordinary, that is to say, experienced prosecutors bringing this case, not as happened here, a former insurance lawyer turned monitor of the Smithsonian Institution in her role at the White House, who was before a grand jury presenting an indictment for the first time in her entire legal career.

14:25Lindsay Halligan, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, ordinary federal prosecutors are bound by the rules of the Justice Department to not just think they have probable cause to believe a crime has been committed and to convince a grand jury of that, but to believe that they are going to be able, are likely to be able to convince a regular jury when the case goes to trial that they have proof beyond a reasonable doubt, which is a very high standard that a crime is committed. So under normal circumstances, it is very difficult, almost impossible, to get an indictment dismissed before trial because federal judges are bound by these presumptions and rules, and the jury gets to be the ultimate decider of fact.

15:23So maybe there is somewhere more there than meets the eye, more than met the eye of the inspector general when he looked into at the Justice Department, when he looked into the dispute between McCabe and Comey over who had authorized leaking what. More even met the eye of John Durham, the special counsel, who listeners may recall from the first Trump administration, who was looking into the Russia investigation. More even met the eye of Bill Barr, who was looking into Comey. But for the life of me, I don't see it. We will learn more, I believe, in the coming weeks about whether there's anything there, but I'm doubting it.

16:14So let's take a quick break. And then when we come back, we'll talk about the broader scope of Trump's so-called retribution tour. This is the political scene from The New Yorker.

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17:05So, Ruth, I'd like to take a step back from the Comey indictment, because it definitely feels like an escalation of Trump's revenge tour, but it isn't the only example. And so I want to talk about the context for this and then the bigger picture, like what this wave of retribution looks like and how far we think it might extend. You know, a lot of Trump's second term actions and policies, you know, immigration, tariffs, this stuff hasn't really come as a surprise since he's been telegraphing exactly what he's thinking and what he plans to do since he announced that he was going to run for office again.

17:37And so in a way, this revenge tour, you know, we were kind of expecting something like this to happen. But I'm wondering if you have been surprised by the form it's taken, by the targets so far. Like, is there any element of this that goes beyond or differs from what you were expecting when Trump was running for office? Trump is nothing if not transparent. And he was transparent in his first term and he was transparent during the campaign about who he wanted to see behind bars. You know, it started with Locker Up and it never stopped from there. And so the only I don't know if it was a surprise during the first term, but it was certainly gratifying that he encountered so much resistance from the line attorneys at the Justice Department, but even more from the political appointees at the Justice Department and elsewhere in his White House counsel's office that they stopped him from getting his way in the first term.

18:46It was not surprising that he went back at it in the second term. It was not surprising that he, having learned the lessons of the first term, you know, no more Bill Barrs. He was going to find an attorney general in Matt Gaetz or eventually Pam Bondi, who was going to comply with his wishes, as do the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, and not going to stand in his way this time. So it's no surprise that he chose, from his point of view, more wisely, that's an odd word to use in this context, this time around. Nonetheless, even though I knew this was coming and I know that more is coming, it remains shocking that after you know that the incumbent U.S.

19:45attorney selected by Donald Trump, a Republican, refused to bring the Comey indictment, that line prosecutors in the office prepared a memo for Lindsay Halligan explaining why the indictment, in their view, was not warranted, that lawyers, lawyers with bar licenses that they have to defend would still permit this to happen. Honestly, even that Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche would permit this to happen, you know, there's that old, it's shocking but not surprising. I guess that's where I am on this one. It's just alarming that this is where we are. So Trump posted on Truth Social in a kind of classic Trumpian way, addressing Pam Bondi directly and demanding that she move forward with charges against Comey while also naming Adam Schiff and Letitia James.

20:38And, you know, I guess I'm just wondering, I mean, obviously, Trump does a lot of things that kind of seem to be lacking in efficacy. Like, you know, we were talking earlier about how it's even if you did want to kind of direct Pam Bondi in this way, like, why not just have a conversation with her rather than post this for the world to see? I mean, do you think that the public pressure is a kind of strategy that he wants to get MAGA world kind of like riled up about this stuff? Could this not jeopardize the cases because there's just such a clear way to kind of argue that that these prosecutions would be politically motivated?

21:14Sure. There's some people who think that that truth social, whatever it's called, truth post. You post a truth, right? Yes, you post a truth in quotes. Was it a mistake that he meant it to be some kind of direct message? I don't know. He seems completely unencumbered by the ordinary norms of don't say things in public that you don't want to have come back and harm you. And it's not like it's out of line with other stuff that he has said publicly or that he's had his White House press secretary say publicly. But you're completely right. If you were being a canny president and thinking around the corner just a little bit, you would realize you haven't done Comey a disservice by demanding that he be indicted.

22:11You've given him a gift in the form of the best evidence that you could possibly imagine for filing a motion to have the case dismissed because it's a vindictive or selective prosecution. And it's very possible we will see that kind of motion from Comey's lawyer. And while those motions are almost impossible to win, very few defendants have the kind of evidence that Comey has of the animus that's being directed his way. So in that Truth Social post, Adam Schiff and Letitia James both came up. Do you see them as kind of his logical future targets because of that? Or I guess who should we be anticipating as potential next targets, given that there was this list, you know, even before Trump took office of people who I think was at the Kash Patel list?

23:06I feel like there were a lot of names floating around before he took office that were sort of like, these are the people who should be worried about a Trump presidency. Cash Patel had a list of, I think it was 60 people in the appendix of his book who he identified as members of the deep state. But Trump himself has, I think it's shorter than 60, but still pretty hefty list of people who he has said over time should be behind bars. But I think you're totally right. We should pay attention to the names he is mentioning most frequently now. The others, you know, who I think might have reason to wake up in the middle of the night and worry would be anybody who had dared to prosecute him.

23:55Jack Smith, certainly, if they could concoct some claim against him. The other prosecutors in Manhattan and in Georgia, you know, he's talked for years about Hillary Clinton. And who knows what he might do? But I think that one of the reasons that we see Letitia James and Adam Schiff on his list are that they seem to have seized on, and I find this not convincing in any way, but some mortgage records that present a kind of implausible claim of mortgage fraud allegedly committed both by Letitia James and by Adam Schiff. I'm glad you mentioned the mortgage fraud thing because I think one of the things that has surprised me about Trump's revenge tour is that I kind of expected this to be a situation where the administration is kind of desperately searching for evidence of the idea that the prosecutions of Trump were politically motivated.

25:02like an email that's like, you know, I hate this guy. Let's try to do this and get it to stick, like stuff that actually had to do with the fact that they were involved in, you know, prosecuting Trump. Instead, it seems like they're kind of casting this wide net over all of Trump's potential rivals and then seeing which of them, if any of them, have ever done something wrong, potentially, even if that has nothing to do with their role as a politician or as a lawyer. Like, is that right to say that it's kind of just like figuring out like if there's like, oh, maybe this guy like didn't, you know, report his, you know, gambling earnings one year.

25:40It is that I am not a person normally given to hyperbole, but this is literally Stalinist with a famous quote is bring me the man and I'll find you the crime. And that is precisely what appears to be happening here. You have this guy, Bill Pulte, who is a federal mortgage official under Trump, and he seems to be having a list of people going through their mortgage records and searching desperately for something, anything that you can hang on them. And that is not the way we are supposed to do criminal law in America. So there's a way in which Trump is using the law against his rivals. And then there's the way in which he's just kind of like trying to weed out the deep state or use his executive power to fire people who either go against his will or who he simply doesn't like.

26:36So we've seen Trump target Comey's daughter, Maureen Comey, a veteran federal prosecutor in Manhattan whom he fired in July seemingly because of her relationship to her dad. Is it I mean, do you think it's true that she was probably fired because of her last name? Or do you think that there was something else there? No, I 100 percent based on the reporting I've done, believe that she was fired solely because of her last name, which is, again, not the way we do things in America. She has filed suit, and I am going to love to see how that progresses. Maureen Comey is an extremely highly regarded, extremely experienced career prosecutor in the Southern District of New York in the U.S.

27:29Attorney's Office in Manhattan, who has prosecuted, among others, you know, small world, Ghislaine Maxwell, Just Did P. Diddy. and has a track record of commendations from the Justice Department. She was fired without explanation, without the process that's supposed to be given to every civil servant faced with disciplinary proceedings. And she has filed a lawsuit. And I think that's great that she is challenging this because getting some testimony about what went on behind the scenes, maybe what went on behind the scenes about how hard the White House was pushing for her removal would be super interesting.

28:15Do you think that the phrase revenge tour, which is what Trump himself has used to describe what it is that he's doing, do you think that that phrase should be reserved for what we're seeing him do in terms of pursuing current and former government officials? Or do you think that the revenge tour also encompasses stuff like Trump posting on Truth Social that he would love to see someone like Jimmy Kimmel get fired? Should we be thinking about the targeting of late night comedians and journalists as part of this larger campaign for retribution? Or do you think that it's something that is it only really makes sense to focus on what's happening within the government?

28:58So first of all, I want to say, and I suspect, you know, it would be hard not to a lot more about Taylor Swift than I do, but I just get these like Taylor Swift tour vibes every time you say revenge tour. And I'm sure if I knew more about Taylor Swift, there might be a joke in there somewhere. There definitely is. It would be like Trump's in his reputation era. I think that is probably what. There you go. Yeah. But I'm glad you brought up Taylor Swift because when I used the phrase tit for tat earlier, I also thought of the new song from the pop musician Tate McRae. So there are a lot of pop culture parallels here.

29:33But I think revenge tour is the phrase that Trump used, right? I'm afraid you're going to have to get a different and perhaps younger, but definitely cooler guest than me to have the pop culture conversation. And so I may have regretted opening that door. I think that there is a way in which the entirety of Trump as a political candidate is a revenge tour. It goes back in some sense to the White House Correspondents' Dinner at which Barack Obama made fun of him and Trump was seething over the birtherism. And a lot of people say that that was the moment at which Trump, humiliated, decided he was going to run.

30:19And revenge is not limited in Trump world to jailing your opponents. It includes going after law firms that either hired your quote unquote enemies or that dared to stand up against you. It is going after reporters and going after their corporate overlords in ways that have caused some media institutions to cravenly cave. It is going after educational institutions that you think of as antithetical to your views and bastions of wokeness. And it is going after agencies that you don't like. It's going after people within agencies that you see as opponents, even if it's illegal for you to fire them.

31:16So Trump's revenge tour contains multitudes. In a minute, we'll turn to what kind of resistance we're seeing, you know, inside the Justice Department and across the political system as Trump pursues this campaign of retribution. This is the political scene from The New Yorker.