"This administration isn't draining a swamp. They are systematically removing the rules and norms of our democracy. They are ruining the lives of the very people that ensure food security, safety and wellness to all Americans. They are targeting any opposition and attacking them. They are incrementally removing institutions, institutional knowledge, and the working group with expertise." - Commenter on Reddit
"“A sitting president doing this out in the open would have ended the career of any sitting president not being Trump in earlier years. I mean this is the biggest justice scandal we’ve seen in our lifetime. A president directly ordering the pretextual prosecution of political opponents and critics he doesn’t like in such a ham-fisted, retaliatory, lawless fashion that violates the laws of the country, the letter of the Constitution and the spirit of liberty . Putting your political opponents in jail because they are your opponents not because of what they did is the heart of tyranny. It is an obviously impeachable offense.”
-
Chris Hayes on ALL In last
Thursday
From the moment Donald J. Trump began his campaign to return to the White House, he has expressed a clear desire to seek vengeance against his enemies. He made that clear during his election campaign last year and has complained relentlessly about the multiple cases filed against him during the Biden administration. As per a direct message to AG Pam Bondi - never intended to go public- Trump demanded the 'heads' of James Comey, Letitia James and Adam Schiff. See e.g.
Trump accidentally posted message pressuring Pam Bondi to charge his enemies, source says
And has used this as a justification for seeking retribution, arguing that the Justice Department was “weaponized” against him under his predecessor. The lengthy post on Sept. 20 addressed Bondi as "Pam" and expressed frustration that "nothing is being done" to his foes.
"What about Comey, Adam 'Shifty' Schiff, Leticia???" he wrote, referring to former FBI Director James Comey, Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
"They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done," he claimed, adding, "We can't delay any longer, it's killing our reputation and credibility."
Which is errant bullshit, given all indictments and prosecutions were legitimate, either conforming to the Constitution - in the case of two impeachments - or to the laws derived therefrom. For example, in the 2024 hush money case, and stolen documents case.
Alas, it has been evident that in parallel with this miscreant's yen to punish those who rightfully prosecuted or impeached him, certain areas of the reactionary press have sought to confuse the issues - referencing "lawfare". A perfect example of this bollocks is the recent Oct. (11) WSJ editorial, Donald Trump and Letitia James, Lawfare Pals', professing (p. A13):
"The New York Attorney General sued him for fraud. Now the President’s Justice Department indicts her for fraud. This is madness."
No, 'madness', is a wet-behind -the -ears bimbo ('former FL beauty queen') prosecutor (Lindsey Halligan) - unable to even properly present her name ( "Lindsey Halligan for the United States government") to the court- and who's whole lawfare case is now suspect. E.g.
by Adam Lynch | October 12, 2025 - 5:33am | permalink
The New York Times reports U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan may have left out important information in her indictment against New York AG Letitia James that might have derailed some charges.
“In the indictment, … Halligan accuses Ms. James of having misrepresented the purpose of the house when she purchased it in August 2020 for $137,000,” reports the Times. “The indictment says that while Ms. James indicated to her mortgage broker that she expected to use the house as a second home, she had instead used it as a “rental investment property, renting the property to a family.”
Only it does not look like she rented it at all.
Indeed, Ms Halligan may not even be a legitimate prosecutor. Contrast that with Ms. James meticulously and professionally nailing down all of her charges over two years.
Blaming Trump opponents for using it on him to justify or minimize his using it on them. I already noted one of these (WSJ) columns by Kimberley Strassel,
Brane Space: WSJ's Kim Strassel Hails Trump As The "Noxious Lawfare" Winner - And She's Right!
But also pointing out her admission that Trump's "lawfare" efforts went way beyond what Dems did in his first term, e.g. writing:
"The list of Trump administration investigations into political opponents seems as long as a congressional omnibus...This Trump 'skill' is nothing to be proud of, it's a broken campaign promise. Mr.Trump passionately decried the political campaigns against him and vowed to put an end to lawfare if elected. He insisted his 'retribution' would be through winning office and 'making our country successful'."
Trump now back in power, thanks to brainless voters expecting benefits, Kim has at least enough honesty to admit the imp has weaponized the Justice department to 'steroid' level. But not so in the more recent (Oct. 4-5, p. C1) WSJ review piece: 'Trump Is Waging Lawfare - After Being Its Target Himself', by former National Review writer, Andrew C. McCarthy.
While he does admit Trump's campaign against Comey is "a flagrant example of lawfare - the selective use of the law as a political weapon" he quickly descends into the realm of 'both sides-ism' to blame Dems for their righteous impeachments, prosecutions. Writing this misleading twaddle:
"But his case against Comey bears striking similarities to the cases brought against him by Democratic prosecutors preceding the 2024 election."
Which makes one wonder what planet McCarthy is living on. In the case of Trump's first impeachment in December, 2019, for example, it was abundantly clear he was guilty of impeachable "high crimes and/or misdemeanors".
Trump's first impeachment took place after a formal House inquiry found
that he had solicited foreign
interference in the 2020 U.S. presidential election to help his re-election bid.
The inquiry – based on an FBI whistleblower overhearing the phone
call - reported that Trump withheld
military aid and
an invitation to the White House from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in order to influence Ukraine to announce an
investigation into Trump's political opponent Joe Biden,
and to promote a discredited
conspiracy theory that Ukraine–not Russia–was behind interference
in the 2016 presidential election.
The White House, indeed, finally released a summary of the call, which showed
Trump asking Zelenskyy for a "favor" shortly after Zelenskyy brought
up U.S. military aid.
See e.g.
The 2nd impeachment was also more than justified given Trump's inciting of the Capitol violence which ought to have forever disqualified him from running for office again. To their credit, the House impeachment managers in a meticulously detailed 80-page pretrial brief filed with the Senate, asserted the violent insurrection, e.g.
Bodycam footage shows rioters attacking police during ... - CNN
was the direct result of a campaign by Donald Trump to overthrow the election at any cost. And only a purblind partisan or poltroon could fail to see it. And at least McCarthy admits - in a semi-weasel words way:
"There is reason to doubt whether the misconduct amounted to a prosecutable offense, but the weightiness of the misconduct is undeniable."
Well, No shit, Sherlock, as they say! But there is more than ample reason to also assert that Trump's incitation to the violence on Jan. 6th is indeed prosecutable and may in fact rise to the level of terror as I previously wrote, e.g.
And I stand by that. McCarthy also consumes multiple paragraphs railing against the so-called 'hush money' case that actually brought the 34 convictions, whining:
"Bragg sought to make the (bookkeeping) transactions subject to different limitations by charging them as felonies, on the dubious theory that Trump had distorted records to conceal a separate crime."
But this was no mere 'theory' but a fact. As Robert Reich noted in his March 27 , 2024 Substack article:
Many people I speak with are worried that this is the weakest of Trump’s four pending criminal trials because it has to do with an illicit affair.
Wrong. Although this case is commonly called the “hush money” case and referred to as Trump’s “coverup of a sex scandal,” this way of describing it minimizes its importance.
This case is really an election interference case — just as are the criminal cases charging him with seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Together, they establish an ongoing pattern: Trump will do anything to gain and keep power, even if his actions violate the nation’s laws.
In other words, it was the $130,000 paying off of Ms. Daniels that covered up the crime of election interference: preventing voters in 2016 from knowing what he did.
Meanwhile, before next putting pen to paper to conflate what Trump is doing now with what prosecutors did with Trump McCarthy might want to read the words below from the recent (Oct.10) NY Times editorial
"Trump and his supporters claim that Democrats started this era of “lawfare” with their investigations into him. Yet those investigations were vastly different. Special counsels, chosen to operate more independently than typical prosecutors, carried out the federal inquiries into Mr. Trump.
One
special counsel during the Biden administration even investigated Joe Biden
himself for his handling of classified documents. And the investigations into
Mr. Trump came in response to his alarming actions, not dubious claims of
mortgage problems but efforts to overturn the outcome of a presidential
election. The investigations followed a potential crime, not a personal
vendetta."
Got that, McCarthy? The Democratic - federal investigations of Trump followed potential crimes, not personal vendettas!
While most of the sleep walking media continues to treat Trump as normal, he has in fact grabbed hold of weaponizing government from stem to stern - including use of extortion.
His calls for prosecutors to file criminal charges against his adversaries have totally eroded the Justice Department’s decades long tradition of independence from the White House and threatened the rule of law. Indeed, from one perspective - including the complicity of a corrupt Supreme Court majority- one can argue the rule of law is now defunct in this forlorn excuse for a nation, now controlled by a criminal enclave.
The Justice Department, now led by Trump’s former personal lawyers, has fired dozens of career prosecutors, many of whom had worked on cases involving the orange, draft-dodging felon. And this pestilence and his allies have targeted or pushed out several U.S. attorneys as he seeks quick movement on cases involving a number of his foes. This is why it's incomprehensible that a recent WSJ Editorial insists Trump has been practicing lawfare, i.e. against Letitia James, like she did it to him.
But as I've shown in this post, those claims are all bogus, false equivalence.
See Also:
Opinion | James Comey. Letitia James. Who’s Next? - The New York Times
Excerpt:
President Trump is once again weaponizing the legal system
to fulfill his personal vendettas. Last year, before he could point to a single
crime that he claimed she had committed, Mr. Trump called for the prosecution of New York’s attorney
general, Letitia James, who was suing him for fraudulent business dealing. On
Thursday the Justice Department secured an indictment against Ms. James,
alleging bank fraud.
The story behind the indictment says it all. A federal
prosecutor decided recently that there was not enough evidence to bring charges
against Ms. James. In a normal administration, that would have been the end of
the case. But Mr. Trump did not take no for an answer. He forced that
prosecutor’s resignation and in a social media post last month demanded that Attorney
General Pam Bondi appoint a new prosecutor: Lindsey Halligan, a Trump ally and
insurance lawyer who had never prosecuted a case.
He also demanded that Ms. Halligan pursue charges against
both Ms. James and James Comey, the former director of the F.B.I. “They
impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING,” Mr. Trump wrote
on Truth Social. “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!” At Ms. Halligan’s request, a
grand jury indicted Mr. Comey on Sept. 25 and then Ms. James.
The charges relate to mortgage paperwork that Ms. James
filed when she bought a house in Virginia in 2020. Previous prosecutors did not
find sufficient evidence that Ms. James was knowingly dishonest, and legal
experts say the charges are flimsy at best. Even if the Justice Department
ultimately loses in court, the legal fight will demand Ms. James’s time and
money. It signals to politicians and the public that opposing the president has
a cost, including the explicit threat of imprisonment.
And
Originalist ‘Bombshell’ Complicates Case on Trump’s Power to Fire Officials - The New York Times
Excerpt:
The Supreme Court will
hear arguments in December about whether President Trump can fire
government officials for any reason, or no reason, despite laws meant to shield
them from politics.
There is little question that the court will side with the
president. Its conservative majority has repeatedly signaled that it plans to
adopt the “unitary executive theory,” which says the original understanding of
the Constitution demands letting the president remove executive branch
officials as he sees fit.
But a new article, from a leading originalist law professor,
has complicated and perhaps upended the conventional wisdom. The legal academy
treated the development like breaking news.
“Bombshell!” William Baude,
a law professor at the University of Chicago who himself is a prominent
originalist, wrote on social media. “Caleb Nelson, one of the most respected originalist
scholars in the country, comes out against the unitary executive
interpretation” of the Constitution.
Professor Nelson, who teaches at the University of Virginia
and is a former law clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas, wrote that the text of
the Constitution and the historical evidence surrounding it grants Congress
broad authority to shape the executive branch, including by putting limits on
the president’s power to fire people.
Professor Nelson’s article was published Sept. 29 by the Democracy Project,
an initiative at the New York University School of Law that plans to release
100 essays in 100 days by an ideologically mixed group.
The article is particularly notable, said Richard H. Pildes, who is a law professor at N.Y.U. and one
of the project’s founders.
“If a highly respected originalist scholar like Professor
Nelson, on whom the court relies frequently, denies that originalism supports
the unitary executive theory,” Professor Pildes said, “that inevitably raises
serious questions about an originalist justification for the court’s looming
approach.”
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