Even under new leadership, the Justice Department ultimately declined to prosecute Comey, though it criticised him for violating policy on the handling of sensitive information pertaining to investigations.
But Trump’s preoccupation with the former FBI director – and all his other perceived enemies – never faded.
“When this election is over, based on what they’ve done, I would have every right to go after them,” he told Fox News in June 2024, directing his remarks mainly towards Joe Biden and the then-president’s family.
But Trump asserted that he wouldn’t do it because the country was at risk of becoming a banana republic, with politicians weaponising the justice system to go after their enemies.
“What’s happened to me has never happened in this country before, and it has to stop,” he said. “It has to stop because otherwise we’re not going to have a country … we can’t have this stuff go on.”
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Trump might draw a distinction between going after a politician such as Biden and pursuing someone such as Comey, who was a public servant (and a Republican for most of his life). But the impression he gave in that interview – even as he used Comey and others to whip up outrage at his campaign rallies – was that he would rise above the temptation of lawfare.
Yet here we are.
Since becoming president, Trump has frequently complained about the “Russia, Russia, Russia hoax” – which is not actually a hoax – but only occasionally talked about revenge against his enemies. At least until last weekend, when he publicly criticised Attorney-General Pam Bondi for failing to press charges against Comey, New York Attorney-General Letitia James and Democratic senator from California Adam Schiff.
The extraordinary intervention, in the form of a Truth Social post directed at Bondi, heaped enormous pressure on the supposedly independent attorney-general and Justice Department to bring forth an indictment.
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Bondi, it seems, was not about to make the same mistake Sessions did in 2018. And she had little choice after Trump installed one of his own former lawyers, Lindsey Halligan, to be US attorney in the district that would bring the charges (against the advice of prosecutors).
Democrats, anticipating this day would come, grilled Bondi at her confirmation hearing in January on whether she would bow to pressure from the White House when it came to prosecuting political enemies.
The former Florida attorney-general was never explicit in her answers, but she did say that “politics [would] not play a part” in her decisions, and suggested she would be willing to resign rather than do something improper.
Given her actions this week, Bondi’s undertakings to the Senate seem as trustworthy as Trump’s comments to Fox News in June 2024.
Democratic Senator Mark Warner said it was “a sad, sad day”, and that Trump was “openly and nakedly trying to weaponise our justice system”. His colleague Chris Murphy was more blunt.
“We aren’t on a slippery slope to a constitutional crisis. We are IN the crisis,” Murphy posted on X. “Time for leaders – political leaders, business leaders, civic leaders – to pick a side: democracy or autocracy?”
And of Trump’s weekend post demanding Bondi bring the charges, Murphy added: “Rarely are the corruption documents made public by the perpetrators.”
It can be difficult to perceive something as a crisis when it is so predictable, and has been so well telegraphed. But when America wakes tomorrow, that surely must be the appraisal.
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