Trump’s DOJ Is Simply Warming Up the Comey Indictment. Black Women Who’ve Prosecuted Trump Are Next.

With a weaponized Department of Justice, Trump is now free to prosecute the "enemy from within."

(Screenshot via YouTube)

Donald Trump has solidified yet another pillar of his authoritarian regime with Former FBI Director James Comey’s indictment, and that’s bad news for all of us, especially the Black women who are Trump’s next political targets.

Trump and Republicans’ authoritarian starter kit has included controlling the highest court in the land, the illegal deployment of the U.S. military against U.S. civilians, the erosion of individual rights and freedoms and the vice grip on billionaires and big corporations. The progression to taking legal action against his political enemies (i.e., anyone who has pursued a modicum of legal accountability for Trump’s actions, which resulted in dozens of state and federal criminal charges being filed against him) has been a primary fixation, and Trump believes that failure to deliver on this campaign promise is “killing our reputation and credibility.” The operative word “our” includes every single Republican official and political appointee throughout the U.S. government who has pledged their fealty to Trump. Plus, the urgency of Trump’s public directive to Attorney General Pam Bondi that “we can’t delay any longer” on prosecuting Comey stemmed from the fact that the five-year statute of limitations for Comey’s case was about to expire.

Merely six days after Trump applied direct pressure to Bondi, she delivered Comey’s indictment and demonstrated that the Department of Justice is no longer the independent, impartial government entity committed to “uphold[ing] the rule of law, keep[ing] our country safe, and protect[ing] civil rights,” but rather Trump’s personal law firm. In its modern iteration, the department and its attorneys general have operated separately from the executive office of the president, giving them the freedom to investigate and prosecute individuals, public officials and even presidents (think Richard Nixon and Donald Trump for starters). While former presidents respected that independence, especially in a post-Watergate environment, Trump has taken the department by the horns, publicly directing investigations and identifying individuals for indictments.

What that means in practice is that any attorney who refuses to do Trump’s bidding, even due to a lack of evidence, will be pushed aside. That was the experience of former acting U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert, who resigned under pressure from the White House the same day as Trump’s message to Bondi. It was also the experience of the team of career prosecutors who sent a memo to Siebert’s replacement, newly appointed acting U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan, stating that there was no probable cause in Comey’s case. Naturally, Halligan benched the professional prosecutors and argued the case alone after only 72 hours on the job.

James Comey has been a thorn in Trump’s side since he investigated Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign for colluding with Russia to influence the election, and Trump has targeted Comey as an enemy in the eight years since, labeling him a “dirty cop” and “a real nut job.” Immediately after the indictment was announced, Comey set up his ring light and recorded a video to convey his confidence and innocence and to call for a trial in a delivery that lacked any hint of surprise. But while Comey declared that he still has faith in the federal judicial system, the aforementioned reality reflects its waning potency and willingness to apply the law against Trump, its internal fracturing in order to bend to the will of Trump and its potential to disproportionately harm the Black women who have also investigated and prosecuted Trump.