WASHINGTON (AP) — For a Justice Department facing intense White House pressure to investigate perceived presidential enemies, indicting former FBI Director…
For a Justice Department facing intense White House pressure to investigate perceived presidential enemies, indicting former FBI Director James Comey was the easy part.
Building a case that can sway a jury beyond a reasonable doubt is a significantly tougher task, but like in other cases of investigations of President Donald Trump’s critics, it increasingly seems to be almost beside the point.
As the administration aims to comply with Trump’s ordered prosecutions, officials have signaled that making life uncomfortable for targets of the retribution — including through reputational harm, legal fees and lingering uncertainty — is a desired goal in its own right, separate and apart from the ability to secure a guilty verdict. It’s a sharp break for a department that for decades, under bipartisan leadership, has been hesitant to bring cases unless it believes it can win, securing convictions in the overwhelming majority of prosecutions it initiates.
Caution about the prospects of a conviction can now be grounds for removal, at least when it comes to cases regarding the subjects of Trump’s ire. The prosecutor whose offices had been overseeing investigations into Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James learned that lesson last week and resigned as the White House pushed for charges.
“I’m sure achieving a conviction would be the icing on the cake, but it is using the criminal justice process itself as an instrument of punishment without regard for guilt or innocence or the likelihood of a conviction,” said Bruce Green, a Fordham University law school professor and former federal prosecutor who focuses on legal ethics.
“The tradition for decades has been that federal prosecutors don’t bring cases unless they think they can win them, unless they think the person they’re prosecuting is guilty,” he added. “And that apparently has gone out the window now.”
That ethos will be put to test not only by the Comey case but also by separate mortgage fraud investigations into James and Sen. Adam Schiff of California, both Democrats whom Trump has publicly called to be prosecuted. Lawyers for James and Schiff have called the investigations meritless and no charges have been filed even as Trump has directly appealed to Attorney General Pam Bondi for action.
Trump and Justice Department officials deny the investigations are part of a broader retribution campaign.
