Trump’s enemies begin facing legal issues. Who’s next?
“We can’t delay any longer,” President Donald Trump wrote in a now famous Truth Social post calling on Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute his political enemies. The delay is now over as James Comey and Letitia James face indictments.
Who could be next?
Comey & James indictments
The first to receive the news from the DOJ was former FBI Director James Comey. Trump has had longstanding issues with Comey over the bureau’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Following the resignation of a U.S. attorney and the appointment of Trump’s personal lawyer to that role, the DOJ indicted Comey on three charges. He has since pleaded not guilty to those charges.
This week, it was New York Attorney General Letitia James being indicted.
James filed a civil lawsuit in 2022 against the Trump organization, ending with Trump being ordered to pay hundreds of millions of dollars.
James, who was charged in the same court and by the same U.S. attorney as Comey, faces charges related to alleged mortgage fraud.
“I was surprised when I read the indictment, because the indictment was still related to mortgage documents, but not the mortgage documents that had been talked about in the press in the weeks leading up to this,” Carissa Byrne Hessick, law professor at the University of North Carolina and Director of the Prosecutors in Politics Project, told Straight Arrow News.
Who’s next?
The easiest future target to see is Sen. Adam Schiff, D-CA. Schiff was the third person named in that Truth Social Post, which Trump reportedly believed to be a private message.
Trump has also accused Schiff of fraud but has not provided specifics. That case has been referred to the DOJ.
Schiff has pushed back against Trump since his first term, when Schiff was a House member. He pushed recent legislation to limit Trump’s powers, and in 2017, led the investigation into any coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Then, there is Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, whom Trump previously said he planned to fire, claiming she committed mortgage fraud.
Cook has pushed back by refusing to resign and filing a lawsuit over Trump’s plan to fire her.
Another of Trump’s most famous verbal targets over the last decade is former special counsel Jack Smith. Smith led the investigation into the Jan. 6 insurrection and Trump having classified documents at Mar-A-Lago.
He’s being investigated over allegations of breaching the Hatch Act, something the Trump administration was just recently accused of.
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-AR, claims Smith’s investigations were to harm Trump’s political prospects in 2024.
Attorneys representing Smith call the investigation “unfounded.”
Also currently under investigation is former New Jersey governor and former Trump ally, Chris Christie. Trump personally called him out to be investigated in a post on Truth Social over the “Bridgegate” scandal of 2013.
Trump had actually supported Christie at the time, calling the investigation an “Obama DOJ scam.”
Then, there is former National Security Adviser John Bolton, who had his home raided by federal agents.
Trump signed two executive orders calling for investigations into former Department of Homeland Security Chief of Staff Miles Taylor and former Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Christopher Krebs.
On top of those people, Trump has also publicly accused the following people of crimes or suggested they should go to jail.
· Former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton
· Former Special Counsel Robert Mueller
· Mayor Brandon Johnson (D-Chicago)
Legal impacts
While the president has made it clear he wants charges brought against certain people, does that very public call help him in court?
Comey hopes it will serve the opposite purpose.
“Comey’s lawyers are planning to file motions to get his charges dismissed,” Hessick said. “One type of motion that they’re planning to file will rely on that message. It’ll be a motion for selective or vindictive prosecution, where they say it’s inappropriate, for these charges are being brought for inappropriate and illegal reasons.”
When it comes to Trump replacing U.S. attorneys with lawyers more favorable to the president, there is some history of that.
“We had a big scandal during the George W. Bush administration, where federal prosecutors were being asked to resign or weren’t being renewed into the second term because of politically charged cases,” Hessick said. “And when that made the news, it was considered a big scandal.”
The Justice Department is not typically politicized, although there is no official law or statute against that.
“In the wake of the Watergate scandal, a lot of steps were taken in order to try to insulate federal prosecutors from the White House,” Hessick said. “Among other things, they would use, initially, independent counsels. And then after that legislation went away, special counsels to try to make sure that whatever prosecutors were handling cases that had big political importance, that they weren’t subject to any sort of political influence from outside.”
It’s also not just a presidential problem, according to Hessick.
“That’s not just an issue when you have someone in office who has enemies,” Hessick said. “This has been an issue that’s really sort of plagued the criminal justice [system] for many, many years.”
For now, the American taxpayers will continue to foot the bill for these cases as the president moves down his list.
Legal protections
Before leaving office, Biden made sure to protect some people around him from future charges from the Trump administration.
The former president issued several pre-emptive pardons, including to his family from politically motivated attacks.
Biden also gave preemptive pardons to former CDC Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, members of the Jan. 6 investigative committee and his son Hunter.
The post Trump’s enemies begin facing legal issues. Who’s next? appeared first on Straight Arrow News.
Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
