On Thursday, disgraced former FBI Director James Comey was indicted by a grand jury on two counts: false statements within the jurisdiction of the legislative branch and obstruction of a congressional proceeding. In other words, Comey allegedly broke the law — and the evidence appears to support the charges. But you wouldn’t necessarily glean that if you read The New York Times’ editorial board meltdown about the indictment.
“The Comey Indictment Plunges the Country Into a Grave New Period,” the piece is headlined. The esteemed “opinion journalists” at The Times warn that Trump “is undermining a core promise of the American justice system: the fair and equal enforcement of the law.”
It matters naught to the board that Comey allegedly provided false testimony to Congress in September of 2020 about his handling of the Russia collusion hoax. Comey previously testified in 2017 that “he did not authorize leaking information regarding the FBI’s investigations into President Donald Trump or former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,” as described by NBC News. Comey later told Sen. Ted Cruz he stood by the testimony.
Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe said Comey was made aware of the leak of information to the press and essentially gave it the stamp of approval after the fact, a 2018 Justice Department inspector general’s report found.
But no, according to The Times, Trump is apparently a “despot” who is “persecuting people he considers his enemies, with little justification other than raw political power.”
Although, however, the board even highlights that the grand jury that indicted Comey declined to bring a third false statement count.
“Grand juries typically file the indictments that federal prosecutors ask for,” the board writes, unwittingly undercutting its own hysteria. You see, by conceding that the grand jury — not Trump — declined to pursue the third charge (which according to The Times is atypical) it must mean the grand jury found credible evidence to indict Comey on the other two charges, but used their discretion and declined to bring the third charge. In other words, the charges stand on merits, not Trump’s alleged desire for retribution.
Nonetheless, according to the board, the “biggest law enforcement scandal of the past 50 years” is that Trump (according to the “experts”) ran on “promising to prosecute his enemies.” (Notably, the editorial board must have forgotten about New York Attorney General Letitia James’ campaign promise to nail Trump).
And yet here I was thinking the “biggest law enforcement scandal of the past 50 years” was the last administration trying to throw a former president in jail. But The Times disagrees with me there, you see.
In fact, the editorial board was quick to declare that “Donald Trump Is Not Above the Law,” in a 2022 piece that claimed the criminal investigation into the then-former president was “required.”
“Mr. Trump’s unprecedented assault on the integrity of American democracy requires a criminal investigation. The disturbing details of his postelection misfeasance, meticulously assembled by the Jan. 6 committee, leave little doubt that Mr. Trump sought to subvert the Constitution and overturn the will of the American people,” the board wrote.
Hellbound and Down 