Caffeinated Politics

As Morning Joe said this morning, “We have crossed the Rubicon”.

Last evening the nation learned of the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey. It is a chilling moment in American history, one that echoes the darkest instincts of executive power and threatens the institutional integrity of our democracy. The charges of making a false statement and obstruction of a congressional proceeding were brought days after Donald Trump publicly demanded action from his attorney general. This is the playbook from the likes of third-world dictators and is emblematic of what we have come to know about Trump. He has a mission of vengeance, one that he outlined in the presidential campaign. A message that his base accepted as they were more interested in his racism and threats of deportation of Brown people.

What we are seeing in glaring lights is the complete weaponization of the Department of Justice to punish political adversaries of the most dangerous and absurd person to ever have sat in the Oval Office. Those who are my age and have grasped our history know this is a staggering erosion of the post-Watergate norms that have, for half a century, protected the DOJ from presidential interference. For those who have followed the deliberate dismantling of the guardrails that keep American democracy from sliding into authoritarianism over the past nine months this news is staggering.

I have to once again, take my readers back to the Richard Nixon years, as we have seen this playbook before. In 1973, Nixon’s firing of special prosecutor Archibald Cox during the Watergate investigation triggered a constitutional crisis. The “Saturday Night Massacre” was a turning point as it was a moment when the public recognized the danger of a president using the justice system to shield himself. (I was in my bedroom with the radio on and heard the news and recall heading into the living room and telling my parents. I was a kid and not understanding it all, but the guts of the story were clear.) After the crisis Congress responded with reforms such as the Ethics in Government Act, the creation of independent counsels, and a renewed commitment to DOJ independence.

What we have seen since Inauguration Day this year is that Trump’ has reversed that trajectory. By installing loyalists like Lindsey Halligan who was his former defense attorney as U.S. Attorney in Virginia, and by pressuring Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute perceived enemies, Trump has undone the very safeguards designed to prevent political prosecutions. The indictment of Comey, whose firing in 2017 was already investigated as potential obstruction of justice, is the culmination of years of personal vendetta dressed up as legal accountability. It is sickening.

Democrats warned this would happen. I wrote on Caffeinated Politics that this would happen. During the 2024 campaign, I pressed repeatedly that a second Trump term would bring retribution, not reconciliation. That the DOJ would become an instrument of political score-settling. That the rule of law would bend to the will of one man. The Comey indictment is proof that those warnings were not hyperbole. They were prophecy.

The institutional damage is profound. Prosecutors within Halligan’s office reportedly opposed the charges, citing lack of probable cause. The former U.S. attorney general even resigned in protest. Comey’s own son-in-law, a federal prosecutor, quit mere minutes after the indictment was announced last evening, writing simply that he was “upholding [his] oath to the Constitution” These are not partisan gestures. History will correctly judge them as acts of conscience from within the system.

When Trump use the justice system to punish critics, it sends a message to every civil servant, every journalist, every citizen that dissent may be met with prosecution. It chills speech. It corrodes trust. It invites fear. This is not the democracy we inherited from the past generations. We must stand up and do everything in our means to stop Donald Trump.

History will judge this moment. It will ask whether we stood up for institutions or bowed to an unconstitutional blow-hard who grifts and undermines the very fabric of our nation. What a dirty and foul stain Trump is making up on our country.