James Comey Is Not an Innocent Victim of the Lawfare He Helped to Create

The recent indictment of James Comey has galvanized the usual suspects of the Washington establishment, who have reacted predictably to the criminal charges against one of their own. The New York Times editorialized with the headline, “The Comey Indictment Plunges the Country Into a Grave New Period,” declaring:

The events of the past week in Virginia mark a dark new stage in President Trump’s effort to turn federal law enforcement into a personal tool of oppression and vengeance. He is undermining a core promise of the American justice system: the fair and equal enforcement of the law.

Times columnist David French—who still insists that the Iraq war was justified and honorable and remains a true believer that the “Russiagate” investigations were legitimate—wrote:

There are times when I miss practicing law, because — right now — there are few more important posts for defending the rule of law and the integrity of the American system of justice than on James Comey’s defense team.

Let’s be clear — perfectly clear — about what happened last week. On Thursday, a federal grand jury, acting on the urging of President Trump’s Department of Justice, indicted Comey, the former director of the F.B.I. This indictment was the culmination of a transparently vindictive campaign by Trump to get revenge on his political enemies, no matter the facts or the law.

In other words, French is claiming that what Trump and the DOJ are doing is unprecedented in US history. Now, make no mistake about the troublesome nature of this indictment and how the White House orchestrated the events. Former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy, who is no fan of Comey and was a strong critic of the “Russiagate” investigation, has called the indictment “incoherent” and predicts that the charges could well be dismissed long before the case could go to trial.

Yet, the Comey indictment is ironic in that while the legacy media condemns the indictment against him, it heaped praise on him when he pursued highly questionable criminal charges against others and used the justice system as a weapon against innocent people. For example, his case against investment banker Frank Quattrone was built on lies and false accusations, something that Candice E. Jackson and I wrote about on the Mises Wire more than 20 years ago.

In that case, Comey (who was the US attorney in Manhattan) claimed that Quattrone orchestrated a “coverup” of financial crimes by telling his subordinates to “clean up their files” in anticipation of a federal investigation. (Quattrone’s subordinates did not destroy any files, nor did the federal investigators find evidence of any financial crimes.) As Quattrone bitterly posted on Facebook recently in a post to his friends:

…Comey wrongfully indicted me for obstruction of justice and lied to the media on live TV that I had instructed my team to destroy documents that I knew needed to be saved due to a subpoena. None of that was true but it took me two trials and a successful appeal spanning almost five years in order to clear my name. This abuse of prosecutorial power wreaked havoc on my family, career and reputation.

The charges against Quattrone finally were dismissed in 2007. Comey’s most famous prosecutorial target, Martha Stewart, was not so lucky. A Manhattan federal jury convicted her in a verdict Candice Jackson and I argued that was based on her being “wealthy beyond a reasonable doubt.” That one of the jurors lied (read that, broke the law) to get onto the jury so he could vote for a conviction apparently was just fine in Comey World, since the feds and the editorial board of the New York Times got the judgment they wanted.

It was no surprise that Comey could get convictions on questionable cases from Manhattan juries, something Donald Trump would find out years later. As Daniel Fischel pointed out in Payback: The Conspiracy to Destroy Michael Milken and His Financial Revolution, the US attorney’s office in Manhattan often would make appeals regarding the wealth or position of the defendant, turning what might seem to be an advantage (money, power) into a huge disadvantage, as jurors were encouraged to focus upon who was on trial as opposed to the actual evidence presented by the prosecution.

Furthermore, Comey had the advantage of trying defendants before jurors that would be heavily influenced by the coverage of the case given by the New York Times. As we have seen over the past century, ideology has trumped the truth when the NYT is on the story. 

The Regime’s Double Standard on Law – And Why It Matters

As I wrote earlier, the Comey indictment is troubling, given Trump’s previous statements and the obvious fact that he all-but-ordered the US Department of Justice to secure an indictment no matter what. In fact, as Andrew McCarthy has written, this point alone probably is Comey’s best defense, and I believe that in the end, no jury will convict Comey—if the case even goes to trial. It may be easy to twist the malleable federal criminal statutes — which is why the DOJ was able to fashion an indictment against Comey — but even a federal jury is likely to see this case as a bridge too far.

The irony here, however, is that people like French and his employer have recalled Lavrentiy Beria’s infamous boast, “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime” as though it only applies to what Trump has done. Yet, if any publication has proven that the spirit of Beria lives in American “justice,” it is the New York Times.

During the 1980s, it was the NYT that championed Rudy Giuliani’s predatory Wall Street prosecutions, conducted while he held the US Attorney position that Comey would later hold in New York City. Paul Craig Roberts and Daniel Fischel have documented how Giuliani and his underlings engaged in lawless behavior, committing felony after felony by leaking secret federal grand jury testimony to the NYT and the Wall Street Journal. Not surprisingly, the NYT editorial board never objected to any of Giuliani’s law breaking even though it was done expressly to deny the accused fair trials. In fact, his very abuse of the law inspired the NYT to publish a near-puff piece as the guy who gets things done.

Likewise, Comey was well-known for leaking material to the media in violation of the law—a law he knew would never be applied to him or his fawning admirers at the NYT and other New York publications. Had a defense attorney done what he did, the attorney would have faced disbarment; Comey only faced high praise from an adoring media.

There is no bigger defender of what we might call the Regime than the New York Times, and its support for legal double standards have not been limited to its aiding and abetting the crimes of Giuliani and Comey during their terms as US attorneys in Manhattan. This is the newspaper that championed the Stalinist propaganda of its correspondent, Walter Duranty, repeating his lies about the Ukraine famine of the early 1930s and the Moscow Show Trials later that decade.

The low, ideologically-based standards of journalism at the NYT continued with the newspaper’s coverage of the 1975 financial crisis that gripped New York City. Even though the city’s financial managers committed felonies by selling capital bonds under fraudulent pretenses by using the proceeds to pay off previous bond issues instead of using the funds for capital improvements, the NYT demanded that the federal government bail out the city at all costs by purchasing future NYC bond issues. In other words, financial crimes were turned into wise financial stewardship because the acts were done by Democratic politicians. The law never applies to anyone favored by the NYT editorial board.

Fast forwarding to the first Trump presidency and Comey’s “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation based upon a fake document created by the Hillary Clinton campaign. Despite the fact that the accusation was false on its face, the NYT and the Washington establishment treated it as a serious investigation that had credibility. Given Comey’s role in promoting this witch hunt, one should not be surprised that he and Trump were on a collision course.

The same people who attack Trump for going after Comey had no problem when Leticia James and Alvin Bragg based their campaigns for attorney general of New York State and district attorney of Manhattan, respectively, on a Beria-like theme: vote for us and we will target Donald Trump. David French never objected nor did the NYT editorial board. The very kind of behavior they would condemn for Trump was perfectly acceptable for a New York Democrat.

According to David French, such tactics are bad only if Trump does them:

“Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.” Those infamous words are the hallmarks of a corrupt state. Trump is now openly mimicking the dictators he admires so much. He has shown Pam Bondi the man, and Bondi’s Department of Justice has manufactured the crime.

When Bragg first filed questionable charges against Trump, even French questioned their veracity, although he never went as far as to invoke the obvious Beria “standard” Bragg was promoting. Of course, when a Manhattan jury followed the example of previous juries in that borough a year later, the NYT rejoiced with its editorial, “Donald Trump, Felon.” If a Northern Virginia jury were to convict Comey (which I doubt will happen, given the political leanings of most voters in that area), one doubts that the NYT would run a similar headline featuring the name of James Comey.

Conclusion

Ever since Donald Trump was elected in 2016, he has battled not only with the Washington establishment but also with unelected officials in the government, something Connor O’Keeffe noted in his recent article. The clash between Trump and the sanctimonious Comey became inevitable as Comey first attempted to find a way to indict Trump and Trump paying him back.

Contrary to what David French, the NYT, and the usual suspects are claiming, we are seeing the culmination of lawfare that has been going on in this country for many years. Rudy Giuliani and James Comey built their careers on abusive prosecutions and using the power of their offices to skirt the law, and Alvin Bragg and Leticia James have extended that practice to the state level.

None of this needed to happen, but here we are. Two years ago, this page warned that by trying to imprison Donald Trump, Democrats were creating the conditions for a Third World banana republic. We are now there, and it won’t stop with the Comey indictment. Yes, one can lay blame with Trump, but Comey also has played a role in breaking down the guardrails to justice, and now all of us must pay.