'Unqualified goobers': Expert says Trump's new prosecutors are fumbling his revenge scheme
President Donald Trump's hand-picked prosecutors are being tasked with locking up his political opponents in a full-bore retribution spree — but it's off to a shaky start because those prosecutors are "unqualified goobers" who have no idea what they're doing, analyst Liz Dye said in a blistering video for the popular YouTube law analysis channel Legal Eagle.
"The Trump political revenge tour is now in full swing. It's like the Taylor Swift Eras Tour, but with a little more makeup and a whole lot more destruction of the rule of law," Dye began.
The issue is coming to a head with the heavily Trump-driven DOJ move to indict former FBI Director James Comey, whom Trump has always despised for his role in the Russia investigation.
Trump forced out a federal prosecutor in Virginia, Erik Siebert, who believed there was insufficient evidence to charge Comey, and installed his former defense attorney Lindsey Halligan in his place. She promptly charged Comey with perjury and obstruction of justice, in an indictment that misquotes what Comey said under oath and had one charge rejected by grand jurors.
Halligan, noted Dye, is "a Florida insurance lawyer who has never prosecuted a case in her life and isn't even licensed to practice law in the state of Virginia. But she sure loves Trump and Pam Bondi."
This is going to be a big problem for Trump, Dye said, because apart from experts believing the Comey charges are poorly conceived, the Eastern District of Virginia "is not a place that tolerates unprofessionalism or showboating." It's known as the "Rocket Docket," she said, because judges move cases fast and methodically.
"All of which is to say, you cannot have a political hack as a top prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia. It's got to be someone competent. And until September 19th, that's exactly what they had," she said.
Indeed, she noted, Siebert was not only thoroughly experienced as a prosecutor but hails from a multi-generational family of Republican Party legal experts and had the backing of not just the GOP but the state's Democratic senators.
This is not the only unqualified prosecutor at the heart of Trump's efforts, said Dye. To investigate largely unsupported and partisan mortgage fraud claims his housing finance director leveled at New York Attorney General Letitia James, he tapped Ed Martin, a longtime GOP activist who briefly served as U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C., but was rejected even by the GOP Senate for his lack of qualifications, erratic behavior, and public praise for a Nazi sympathizer.
"Ed Martin never prosecuted a case in his life before Trump gave him all those jobs in the Justice Department," said Dye. "So maybe not such a big surprise that he's been unable to find anything to pin on James or anyone else. Honestly, I'm not sure that guy could find his way out of the men's room at the DOJ without an aide to hold his hand and walk him out."
Ultimately, Dye concluded, Trump's "revenge tour" is not likely to amount to much because the only people willing to help him do it are profoundly inept — to say nothing of the fact that in Halligan's case specifically, her appointment will likely expire in 120 days, get rejected by local judges, and be blocked in the Senate by Virginia Democrats withholding their "blue slips."
"Lawyers are not like widgets. You can't just swap out one for the other," said Dye. "And I say this as someone who will admit to being absolutely unqualified to run a U.S. attorney's office. But I guess we're going to find out soon just exactly how corrupt Halligan intends to be."
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