Former FBI Director James Comey pleaded not guilty Wednesday to two federal crimes a federal grand jury in Virginia charged him with last month. Comey now awaits a Jan. 5 trial in the Eastern District of Virginia, and neither charge the Justice Department is bringing seems particularly robust — or even serious. Should acting U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan even manage to secure a conviction, it’s entirely possible that he will serve little to no jail time.
Comey served as FBI director when President Donald Trump first took office but was quickly fired for refusing to drop an investigation into potential ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. In the years since, he has remained a vocal critic of Trump’s authoritarian streak and a constant target of the president’s ire. Comey is now accused of lying about authorizing a leak to the media during his tenure when questioned about it during a 2020 Senate hearing. The indictment Halligan obtained charges him with making a false statement to Congress and obstruction of a congressional proceeding.
But, to misuse an adage, it’s the journey, not the destination, that matters most to the administration that has brought this case. The road Comey now walks is a fun house mirror of the one Trump trudged; indeed, Trump’s being charged with crimes is what prompted this quest for vengeance from the White House. And if the president has his way, New York Attorney General Letitia James and Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., may soon find themselves on that same road.
Trump has never been subtle about his dreams of revenge for the various investigations, impeachments and criminal and civil cases leveled against him over the years. Schiff, then in the House, served as lead the impeachment manager against Trump in 2020. (He was acquitted in that impeachment and another the following year.) James successfully brought a civil case against the Trump Organization in 2022. (The massive fines were thrown out by a New York appeals court this year, but the fraud conviction she secured remains.)
Trump falsely claims that these were illegitimate political attacks against him and casts himself as an innocent victim to others’ machinations, a folk hero who strikes back only when wounded. Soon after his first federal indictment in 2023, he declared that “the seal is broken,” meaning it was time to “get tough” against those “involved in the destruction of our elections, our borders and our country itself.” Since returning to the White House, the president has leaned on the Justice Department to put his enemies through the same wringer he was put through.
Trump’s harrying has drawn results, albeit not as quickly as he’d like. Schiff and James are under federal investigation in Maryland and New York, respectively, over allegations of mortgage fraud, upon referrals from William Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Trump has also gone after Federal Reserve Board member Lisa Cook, whose illegal firing is on hold as the courts weigh in, for supposedly obtaining a mortgage fraudulently. Attorney General Pam Bondi separately named Ed Martin as a “special attorney” in August to probe James’ and Schiff’s mortgages, as well. In each case, Trump has repeatedly lambasted Bondi for not moving faster and pre-emptively declared his perceived enemies guilty.
Neither the Schiff investigation nor the James investigation appears to be making much headway from the outside. MSNBC correspondents Carol Leonnig and Ken Dilanian reported Monday that a “top prosecutor in Virginia has informed colleagues she plans to decline to seek charges” against James. The Washington Post reported last month that Martin “appears to have scant evidence showing that the alleged wrongdoing [from Schiff and James] was anything more than paperwork errors.”
U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert resigned under pressure from Trump in late September after he declined to bring charges against Comey. His departure opened the door for Halligan’s abrupt appointment and her dash to beat the statute of limitations. She pursued charges against Comey despite a memo from career prosecutors “documenting why they believed probable cause did not exist” for an indictment. Despite the vagaries of the indictment the grand jury handed up, signing off on two of her three initial charges, it still means Comey is scheduled to face federal trial in just a few short months.
Halligan’s rush to prosecute Comey vividly demonstrates what a determined Trump loyalist can do if she places winning his approval over winning in court. But securing a final verdict against the former FBI director may not be the full goal. When Trump was standing trial in New York in 2024, one person close to him told The Washington Post: “The phrase around here is ‘the process is the punishment.’”
In other words, in Trump’s eyes the very act of having to show up at court day in and day out, understimulated and overly constrained, was meant to cow and humiliate him. Comey’s having to defend himself at all can be seen as his punishment for having defied Trump’s early demands for loyalty. The same will be the case should Martin or Halligan manage to secure indictments against James or Schiff.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
