President Donald Trump's strategy to prosecute his political opponents could backfire spectacularly, according to a former federal prosecutor.
Glenn Kirschner, the former Deputy U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, discussed Trump's efforts to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey on a new episode of "The Legal Breakdown" with progressive YouTuber Brian Tyler Cohen. His comments come at a time when the Trump administration returned an indictment against Comey on two counts of obstruction of justice and lying to Congress for statements he made to a Senate committee in 2020.
"This represents unparalleled incompetence and imbecility," Kirschner said. "Those are the only words I can come up with."
Newly minted interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Lindsey Halligan, one of Trump's former defense attorneys, is leading Comey's prosecution. Halligan is replacing another Trump appointee, Erik Siebert, who refused to prosecute Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, according to media reports.
Experts have noted that this move violates a 50-year-old norm that the president cannot order the Department of Justice to prosecute a political opponent.
Kirschner said he has been hearing that Halligan is struggling to find another prosecutor inside the Eastern District of Virginia to prosecute the case, which he said could open them up to court sanctions or losing their law license if the case is ruled to be a vindictive prosecution.
"The rank and file prosecutors who know what it takes to go into federal court in Alexandria, Virginia ... know what they're getting into, which is why inferentially we're beginning to hear that they're refusing to do it," Kirschner said.
Kirschner noted that Halligan seems to be a key part of Trump's legal strategy because she is willing to prosecute his political enemies, but said she is "entirely ill-prepared" to handle prosecuting Comey. That puts her in a perilous situation where she could lose her law license, thereby making her unable to continue going after Trump's foes.
"[Trump's] going to have to get a political appointee who will be on the hook ethically the way anybody else would," Kirschner said. "But I have a feeling that may be the only person they may be able to find, some lapdog political appointee to go in and put his or her bar license on the line to please Dear Leader."
