President Donald Trump's Department of Justice on Thursday indicted New York Attorney General Letitia James (D), and one national security expert is warning that the charges have strong implications for the state of the American justice system.
In a Thursday interview with MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace, John Brennan — who was the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during former President Barack Obama's administration — slammed the indictment of James, who successfully sued Trump for fraudulent real estate valuations in 2023.
Brennan observed that the DOJ indictment of both James and former FBI Director James Comey was "just one feature that we have seen over the last nine months in terms of the collapse of the America we once knew." He also said that whether the prosecutions are ultimately successful in court is irrelevant to Trump's aims.
"Donald Trump probably doesn't care. He probably would like people to get convicted, but he knows he can't control that," Brennan said. "What he would like, though, is to have the word 'indicted' next to individuals' names. And he knows that he has a Department of Justice that he can exploit and manipulate, and he has an attorney general who's willing to do the bidding."
The former CIA director compared Bondi's DOJ indictment of James and Comey to former President Richard Nixon's attorney general, Elliot Richardson, who resigned after refusing Nixon's orders to indict special prosecutor Archibald Cox during the Watergate investigation. According to Brennan, Americans should have no reason to expect Trump administration officials to put the country's interests above their loyalty to the president.
"We are not in that era anymore. We don't have individuals who are willing to stand up to what clearly is an autocratic, authoritarian effort on the part of the Trump administration," he said. "Not just Trump, it's the Stephen Millers and others who are very mean-spirited, very vengeful, very nasty in many respects, trying to hurt people across the board."
"If you're not on the Trump team, you are potentially a target ... The way that they're going out now and trolling and looking for ways to indict people or bring charges against people, really is something that should worry every American," he added. "And the fact that Republicans in Congress are allowing this to happen, that I find is the most appalling part. Until they grow some ... in Congress and say enough is enough, I think we're going to continue to see this abuse of power, which is what it is."