WILL TRUMP’S REVENGE CAMPAIGN BACKFIRE? A grand jury in Norfolk, Virginia, has refused to reindict New York Attorney General Letitia James on charges of mortgage fraud. Meanwhile, the Justice Department is considering whether to indict Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA), also for mortgage fraud, and whether to seek a new indictment against former FBI Director James Comey on charges of lying to Congress. On Capitol Hill, the House Judiciary Committee has ordered former Trump prosecutor Jack Smith to appear for a closed-door deposition on December 17.
What do these matters have in common? They are all the extended fallout from campaigns to remove President Donald Trump from office during his first term and, later, to destroy his business empire, and finally, to indict, convict, and imprison him to prevent him from becoming president again.
They all failed; just look at who is in the White House today. But each of the people involved, as well as others, did a lot of damage to both Trump and the nation. And now, Trump, his appointees, and his political allies in Congress are pursuing some measure of revenge.
They — James, Schiff, Comey, and Smith — deserve it. James, who was elected in New York on a get-Trump platform, twisted the law to come up with a lawsuit so punitive that it put the president “at risk of losing the New York real estate empire that the rest of his career was built on,” in the words of Axios. Trump did not have the right to a jury trial, and a compliant judge gave James nearly everything she asked for, ordering Trump to pay $464 million for business practices that harmed no one. An appeals court later threw the penalty out and is considering doing the same with the entire case.
Schiff was an early, loud proponent of the discredited “collusion” theory in the first Trump administration. There was “evidence in plain sight” of collusion, Schiff claimed. He was also a fan of the debunked Steele dossier. When that all fell apart, Schiff did a quick pivot to a rushed, corner-cutting impeachment of Trump over the Ukraine phone call affair. The Democratic-controlled House voted to impeach Trump on Dec. 18, 2019 — timed in the hope that impeachment would make him unelectable in the 2020 election.
Comey oversaw “Crossfire Hurricane,” the FBI’s effort to bring Trump down in 2016 and 2017. His FBI hired Christopher Steele and pushed to have the dossier’s false conclusions included in the Intelligence Community Assessment of Russian attempts to influence the 2016 election. Then, two weeks before Inauguration Day, 2017, Comey ambushed the president-elect with the dossier’s most salacious and false allegation — the so-called “pee tape” story. Then Comey misled Congress on whether the FBI was investigating Trump, which it of course was. And all that before Trump fired Comey on May 9, 2017, less than four months into Trump’s presidency.
Finally, Smith relied on what the New York Times called “novel applications” of the law to charge Trump with trying to steal the 2020 election. Then Smith tried to rush the courts into settling the constitutional issues his prosecution raised in time for Smith to try to jail Trump before the 2024 election. Then, when it became clear the courts would not rush the case to trial before the election, Smith violated Justice Department policy by releasing damaging information about Trump shortly before voting took place. It was all plainly aimed at using prosecutorial power as a weapon to ensure that Trump would not be elected again.
Of course, James, Schiff, Comey, and Smith were not the only lawfare warriors trying to bring down Trump. Don’t forget Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who launched what many observers called a baseless, convoluted, and politically motivated indictment of Trump, resulting in a deep-blue jury’s guilty verdict on 34 felony counts. Or E. Jean Carroll and her supporters, who waited more than 20 years to make an impossible-to-prove accusation of sexual abuse against Trump, and then won the case using a one-time-only #MeToo exception to the law that could never be employed today. And there are more.
It’s hard to feel sympathy if some of these harsh and politically motivated attacks on Trump have come around to bite accusers on the backside. But here is the problem for the president today: By and large, the revenge campaign isn’t working.
The Justice Department is struggling to make charges stick. Some cases are weak and difficult to make. Grand juries are not always cooperative. There is always the possibility that the effort to exact revenge will backfire. It’s safe to say some or all of those have applied to the James, Schiff, and Comey cases.
As far as Smith is concerned, the House Republican plan seems to have high blowback potential. Remember that Smith never got to put Trump on trial in the 2020 election case. That is what happens when the target of your investigation is elected President of the United States and your plan to imprison him blows up in your face.
But now the House Judiciary Committee, in ordering Smith to sit for a deposition, will finally give the prosecutor a chance to make his case against Trump. How? This is not the Jan. 6 committee, where there was only one side and everybody read from the script the showrunner gave them. There are 19 Democrats on the Judiciary Committee. Like any other committee, except the Jan. 6 fiasco, the minority has full rights to use its time to elicit information from a witness as it sees fit. Committee Democrats will use their time to air the prosecution that Smith never could. Many in the media, of course, will eat it up. Republicans will find themselves playing defense.
BYRON YORK: REQUIEM FOR A SCANDAL
And that could be what happens to the president’s desire for revenge. But remember this: On June 4, 2024, a few days after Bragg’s jury convicted Trump on those 34 felony counts, Trump answered the questions of those who wondered whether he would seek revenge if he were elected president. “My revenge will be success, and I mean that,” Trump said. He hasn’t quite kept that pledge, but the fact is, his revenge will be success. Everyone one of the lawfare warriors discussed above was absolutely gobsmacked when Trump was elected president in November 2024. After all they had done! That alone was a devastating act of revenge on Trump’s part.
An even more devastating revenge would be for Trump to have a successful presidency. Yes, perhaps it would be satisfying to prove that someone cheated on a mortgage application. But winning the presidency and successfully implementing Make America Great Again policies? For the lawfare warriors, that could be a wound that never heals.