It should not have been all that surprising that The New York Times, the mainstream newsletter of the left, headlined its front-page piece on the federal indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, “Trump Gets the Retribution He Sought, and Shatters Norms in the Process.” Or that its subheading was “A prosecutor’s drive to indict James Comey trampled over the Justice Department’s long tradition of keeping a distance from politics and the White House, and raised the prospect of more arbitrary charges.”
After all, less than a week after President Trump’s electoral success in November last year, The New York Times ran a front-page article with the headline, “As Trump Returns to Power, Allies and Adversaries Expect a Wave of Revenge.” The story also carried the somewhat convoluted sub-heading, “President-elect Donald J. Trump’s momentary talk of unity on election night may underestimate the depth of his resentment after multiple impeachments, investigations, indictment and lawsuits.”
And, shortly after Pamela Bondi’s swearing in as Trump’s Attorney General and her issuance of a memo announcing her plan to establish a task force to examine the Biden alleged weaponization of the justice system, the Times headlined its report “Justice Dept’s Weaponization Group Underscores Trump’s Quest for Retribution” and the article carried the sub-heading, “The Memo signaled the most significant first step in deploying the levers of government to carry out President Trump’s repeated suggestions that he will pursue those he perceives to be his enemies.”
This venting by the Times, a major Trump Derangement Syndrome sufferer and opinion influencer, prompted us at the time to express our fear that it marked the opening broadside in what would be a sustained effort to avoid any light being shed on how the improbable slew of dubious legal assaults on President Trump could have come about. But surely, those dubious investigations and cases brought against him did not pass the smell test. They fairly reeked of a compromised justice system and corrupted officials.
Thus, while there may have been some apparent or technical irregularities on Trump’s part, they never rose to the level of violations about which anyone “makes into a federal case.” Indeed, as we have noted, the charges against Trump plainly were not the result of the objective pursuit of criminal acts in the normal course, but rather of the selective targeting of an individual who is deemed an enemy and then grasping at any possible criminal charge, however inconsequential and unlikely, to otherwise attract the attention of prosecutors or investigators.
And arguably – and seriously so – Comey was a key player in significant parts of the anti-Trump cabal. Yet the Times and its amen corner seemed determined to delegitimize any inquiries that might uncover what happened by characterizing them as “revenge” and “retribution.”
Plainly, finding out how the charges against Trump were arrived at is not just a Trump concern. It is important for all of us to know with as much certainty as possible, whether, how and by whom our criminal justice system may have been hijacked. Weaponization of the legal system is not always a matter of making up fake facts. It sometimes involves the exploitation of the ambiguous and the magnification of the unremarkable.