President Donald Trump has corrupted the Department of Justice to target his political enemies as part of a "cynical ploy" borrowed from Vladimir Putin, according to a former federal prosecutor.
A federal grand jury indicted former FBI Director James Comey for making alleged false statements to Congress and obstruction of justice, both based on his denial that he had authorized leaks to the media about the 2016 investigation of Hillary Clinton's emails, and former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade published a column for Bloomberg examining the case on its merits.
"The indictment came a week after Trump posted a demand to Attorney General Pam Bondi to charge Comey and other perceived enemies, calling them 'guilty as hell,'" McQuade wrote. "Perhaps cognizant that the five-year statute of limitations would be expiring within days, Trump added, 'We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility.'"
That social media post made plain the DOJ was acting on Trump's orders, but he made that even more obvious by replacing the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia who questioned the case's strength with a former personal attorney of his who has never prosecuted a single case before presenting the Comey evidence to a grand jury.
"By directing his DOJ to charge Comey, Trump appears to be borrowing a tactic from the playbook of Vladimir Putin," McQuade wrote. "According to Ben Rhodes, a former deputy national security adviser, Putin doesn’t try to convince the Russian people that he is honest. Instead, he works to persuade them that everyone else is corrupt."
"It’s a cynical ploy meant to condition people to tolerate corruption," she added. "If voters believe that all public officials are crooks, then they will overlook the crooked leader who professes to share their values."
Trump, of course, is the only president who has ever been convicted of a felony – all 34 counts against him in the only criminal case out of four in which he faced trial – and McQuade suspects his vindictive prosecution of Comey, and the others he's threatened, shows he's playing the same game as the Russian president he admires.
"If Trump can make people believe that indictments like the one targeting Comey are meaningless, then the indictments against him can be dismissed just as easily," McQuade wrote. "Indeed, following the Comey indictment, New York Democratic Representative Dan Goldman said, 'The problem is how are you ever going to know whether an investigation by the FBI, an investigation by the Department of Justice, is legitimate or is corrupt.'"
"Exactly," she added. "When everyone is corrupt, then no one is."