'Unprecedented?' Hardly

AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

First things first: James Comey is a lying, disgusting, unethical, terrible, horrible, no-good/very-bad man. 

Even worse, he violated his oath and his ethical obligations to the Constitution and the country out of political spite, helping orchestrate a hoax that tore the country apart and personally directing the destruction of a good man (General Flynn) in a way that even he knew was unprecedented, unethical, and over the objections of the agents he had assigned to investigate him. 

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He broke countless laws to further his efforts and has profited handsomely. 

Left: James Comey telling Congress in September 2020 that the Steele Dossier wasn't used in the 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment on the Russia hoax.

Right: Tulsi Gabbard's release from July, showing the Steele dossier was directly cited and that Obama intel officials overruled senior intel officials who told them it was garbage.

With all that said, it is an open question as to whether he is guilty of the charges for which he was indicted. Had the statute of limitations not run out on many other potential charges, no doubt he could be nailed to the wall. On these? I have no freakin' clue because we only have the barest evidence presented so far--whatever else there is will come out at trial, presumably. 

Jonathan Turley has a good column on the case, and explains in particular how Comey basically admitted that he violated ethical standards to destroy General Flynn--he in fact bragged about it!--and gives a good precis of the legal ins and outs. 

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With all that said, I want to address the Donkey in the room, which is the claim that will be infinitely repeated--that this indictment is an unprecedented assault on the rule of law and an abuse of power employed to destroy an enemy of the president. 

Oh, please. Let's assume for the moment that Comey is being targeted because he is an enemy of the president. Actually, forget the presumption. It is TRUE that Comey would get away with his crimes if Biden were still president, because we know that the Justice Department let him and many other Biden friends get away with countless crimes when he was president. So there is zero doubt that Comey's legal troubles only exist because Biden lost and Trump won. 

Big shock there. Biden signed an actually unprecedented number of pardons on his way out the door, many of which were for his political friends and family. If that isn't politicized justice, I don't know what is. 

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Now, admitting that Comey would have gotten away with crimes if Biden remained president doesn't mean he didn't commit them--he committed far more than the paltry ones with which he was charged, in fact, and for purely political reasons. It's just that he will escape prosecution for them due to the statute of limitations. Most of Comey's punishment will have to come from God, because we rightfully limit ourselves here on Earth. 

As for going after your political enemies? Have any of these people lived through the past decade? Unprecedented? Ask General Flynn, who was targeted even before Trump got into office, and was SET UP by Comey. As Turley wrote about Comey:

There is one individual who is likely to be watching with particular interest and perhaps satisfaction: former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

Comey is facing two counts of making false statements and obstructing a congressional proceeding. The first count under 18 U.S.C. 1001 (a)(2) is the exact charge that Comey engineered against Flynn.

Comey gave a book tour where he thrilled audiences about how he secured a criminal charge against Flynn for making false statements. In one event, an audience cheered as Comey took credit for the controversial charge. He explained that what he did was not exactly proper. It was, he explained,

“something we’ve, I probably wouldn’t have done or maybe gotten away with in a more organized investigation, a more organized administration…I thought, ‘It’s early enough, let’s just send a couple of guys over.’”

The actual agents who interviewed Flynn did not believe that he intentionally lied about a meeting with Russian diplomats, but Comey and his investigators pushed for charges anyway. They drained Flynn of resources, threatened to indict his son, and ultimately secured a guilty plea.

Now it will be Comey in the dock, facing a charge of making a false statement. He will do so as someone who has admitted to improperly removing FBI material and leaking information to the media.

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Of course, Comey isn't the only liberal hero who abused power to destroy Trump and his allies. Entire political campaigns were waged and won on the promise to destroy Trump, and numerous Trump allies wound up in jail on charges that no Democrat would ever face. In fact, Steve Bannon spent time in jail for committing a crime that Hunter Biden committed and got away with: refusing to testify before Congress. The Justice Department prosecuted the one case, and not the other. 

Go figure. 

You may have noticed the remarkable coincidence of Trump's many indictments occurring just in time to tie him up in court during the presidential campaign, or perhaps the fact that Biden's Acting Associate Attorney General, the third-highest position at the Justice Department, resigned from his Washington post to go to the Manhattan District Attorney's office and lead the prosecution of Trump.

That happens often--leaving a plum D.C. job to go work in a city prosecutor's office. ALL THE TIME. Nothing unusual about that at all. Sort of like a Sous Chef at a Michelin three-star restaurant leaving to manage a McDonald's. 

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That was true until your friends changed the rules. I told you not to change the rules. I warned you. I’ve been warning you for 10 years in my columns and books. But you didn’t listen. You were smarter than we are because you figured you could change the rules for yourself, but they wouldn’t turn around and bite you on the ass. Well, enjoy the teeth in your ass.

I admit that it is infuriating that Pravda commentators are pretending that what Trump is doing is "unprecedented." Even were the charges were cooked up--and they aren't--this would just be turnabout. For a decade, the Democrats, including Comey, have waged horrific lawfare against Trump and his allies. The media cheered them on, intoning "nobody is above the law" endlessly. 

But to all the people setting their hair on fire about weaponizing the Justice Department to go after political enemies, show me your posts decrying the lawfare and ANY of the 91 indictments against Trump.

Once Democrats get back in power, they will do the same. Their complaint isn't that power is being abused here--they pioneered the tactic, for God's sake, and abused power with glee and to applause--but that they didn't succeed in destroying Trump and now have to face the consequences. 

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The best outcome from all this is to carefully build a case against every abuser of power who used lawfare to destroy Trump and his allies and convict as many as possible, and then negotiate a truce based on mutually assured destruction. 

The alternative is to descend into a Banana Republic. Indictments based on pendulum swings are terrible for the country. 

But the current Democratic Party and Pravda position seems to be: Democrats get to throw Republicans in jail and bankrupt them, and Republicans must take it without complaint or retaliation. Vladimir Putin or other strongmen can get away with that, but it doesn't work like that in most Western countries. 

At least not yet. 

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