--:-- Ryan Knutson: Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business and power. I'm Ryan Knutson.
--:-- Sadie Gurman: It's Monday, September 29th. Last week, President Donald Trump started to make good on his promise to prosecute the people he sees as his enemies. The Department of Justice has indicted former FBI Director James Comey.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: If convicted, Comey faces a possible sentence of up to five years in prison. It's a huge deal, not just for the fact that this is a former FBI director, but this is one of Trump's number one enemies.
--:-- Sadie Gurman: That's right. And what's different about this Justice Department and the second administration is that they seem to be sort of giving into that pressure. It's the first real case where we see Trump getting what he wants, basically having one of his adversaries be charged by his Justice Department.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: So, President Trump has made no secret of his desire to go after people he sees as being against him. Since he's come back into office, what has he actually done to carry out that mission?
--:-- Sadie Gurman: Yes, so right out the gate from the first weeks of this administration, officials started firing prosecutors, agents who worked on investigations of Trump or his supporters. We saw dozens of prosecutors who handled cases from the January 6th Capitol riot get pushed out or demoted.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And basically everybody that worked on special counsel Jack Smith's team, which brought two criminal cases against Trump, has now left the department. And he's also installed people who are very loyal to him to run the Justice Department.
--:-- Sadie Gurman: Yes, that's right. So you have Attorney General Pam Bondi, who represented him during 2020 election challenges. You also have Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, who represented him in his New York criminal case.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: So Trump's beef with former FBI director James Comey goes back almost a decade to the 2016 presidential campaign. It started when Comey said he would not recommend prosecuting Hillary Clinton over her handling of classified emails.
--:-- Sadie Gurman: And then a few months later Comey said publicly that the FBI was investigating whether the Trump campaign had coordinated with Russia. There's this famous meeting where Comey is actually at the White House having dinner with Trump, and Trump is asking him questions about it, and Comey says, you know, we'll try to, we're We're doing it as fast as we can.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: But at that point, according to Comey, he felt this intense pressure and this need to be loyal. Trump has disputed Comey's description of the conversation. Not long after, Trump fired Comey.
--:-- Sadie Gurman: Yes, that's right. So President Trump fires Comey, and then that triggers a series of events that spawned Special Counsel Mueller's probe, which dogged his first presidency.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And so Trump has just been fuming about Comey for almost 10 years now. Now walk us through what's happened with Comey since Trump took office on his second term.
--:-- Sadie Gurman: Oh, you mean like the seashells? Oh yeah, I forgot about that. The seashells. Earlier this year, Comey posted a photo online of seashells arranged on a beach that spelled out 86-47. 86 is slang for getting rid of someone, and 47 was a reference to the 47th president, a.k.a. Trump.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Conservatives saw this as a threat against Trump. Comey said he didn't mean it as a threat and deleted the post. The seashell episode eventually blew over, but not Trump's efforts to bring charges.
--:-- Sadie Gurman: Prosecutors started examining in July whether Comey lied during testimony he made five years ago on the Hill about the Russia investigation.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And what we know about it is that career prosecutors handling the case repeatedly expressed to their superiors that they didn't see enough evidence to muster a case against Comey.
--:-- Sadie Gurman: U.S. Attorney Eric Siebert, a Trump appointee, agreed with them. According to people familiar with the matter, Siebert told colleagues that there wasn't enough to bring a case.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And when Trump found out, he wasn't happy. Trump has gathered at the White House with his advisors and he asks them point blank, where are these prosecutions?
--:-- Sadie Gurman: And Justice Department officials explain to Trump in that setting that a prosecutor who had looked at the case didn't think that it would be a slam dunk, thought it would be pretty weak and was not intending to bring charges.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And Trump basically said, I don't care. And then all of a sudden, Siebert receives this call from a senior official saying he's probably going to get fired.
--:-- Sadie Gurman: And so he starts packing up his things and the very next day Trump says during a publicly televised press conference, I want him out.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: So you want him fired? You want him out? Yeah, I want him out, yeah.
--:-- Sadie Gurman: Earlier this month, after that press conference, Siebert resigned. So Siebert's gone.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Within a day, Trump installs his own handpicked prosecutor, another former defense attorney, Lindsey Halligan.
--:-- Sadie Gurman: So Lindsey Halligan is somebody who had worked for Trump in the past?
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Lindsay Halligan was actually at Mar-a-Lago when FBI agents searched the property in August 2022 for classified documents in their investigation into his handling of classified information.
--:-- Sadie Gurman: She represented him in that case, and she's been by his side for a number of years now.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Here's Halligan in an interview last year. No matter what life throws at him, no matter how many people doubt him, he gets back up and he fights every single time.
--:-- Sadie Gurman: Halligan has spent most of her career as an insurance lawyer. This case against Comey will be the first criminal one she's ever prosecuted.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And what details do you have about what information prosecutors showed Halligan on her first day as U.S. attorney?
--:-- Sadie Gurman: Prosecutors presented her with a pretty detailed memo explaining why they didn't see probable cause to charge Comey and explaining that this doing so could raise some serious ethical issues.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And they presented this all to her, and she basically barreled through it. That's according to my reporting.
--:-- Sadie Gurman: Halligan had been on the job for three days when she filed the case against Comey on Thursday.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: In the indictment Comey was charged with making false statements and obstructing Congress.
--:-- Sadie Gurman: The statements trace back to an exchange between Comey and Senator Ted Cruz at a hearing in 2020.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: So your testimony is you've never authorized anyone to leak. And Mr. McCabe, if he says contrary, is not telling the truth. Is that correct?
--:-- Sadie Gurman: Again, I'm not going to characterize Andy's testimony, but mine is the same today.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: The Justice Department alleges that Comey lied in his response.
--:-- Sadie Gurman: You, in your career, have read lots of indictments. Did anything about this one stand out to you?
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Well, for one, it's very short. It's bare bones. It's two pages. That was surprising.
--:-- Sadie Gurman: And the other thing that stood out to me, of course, is that Halligan is the only person who signed it. Usually you see an appointed U.S. attorney, their signatory, and then the names of other career officials that worked on the case.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Hmm. She wasn't the only person involved, though. There was also a grand jury.
--:-- Sadie Gurman: So can you explain how that works?
--:-- Ryan Knutson: In a grand jury, you basically have up to 23 people who have to decide whether they see probable cause to bring an indictment.
--:-- Sadie Gurman: And that standard is much lower than the standard that prosecutors would have to meet at trial.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: So it's much easier to get an indictment than a conviction.
--:-- Sadie Gurman: And, you know, there's sort of a saying, you know, in the legal community, a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And that's just to say that it's really easy to get an indictment if you're a prosecutor.
--:-- Sadie Gurman: How did Comey respond?
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Well, Comey, in typical Comey fashion, he posted a video basically saying that his heart breaks for the Justice Department.
--:-- Sadie Gurman: My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system, and I'm innocent.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: So let's have a trial and keep the faith.
--:-- Sadie Gurman: And what did Trump say after the indictment?
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Trump just took the opportunity to do a victory lap and doubled in on all the insults that he's leveled at Comey over the years.
--:-- Sadie Gurman: And it also provided an opportunity for Trump to be very public about the other people that he wants the Justice Department to go after.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Who those other people are is after the break.
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--:-- Sadie Gurman: Who else does Trump want his Justice Department to go after?
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Okay, so the other people are Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James, who brought a civil fraud case against him last year.
--:-- Sadie Gurman: And then we also have Fannie Willis, the Georgia prosecutor, who brought racketeering charges against Trump and his allies in Georgia.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: He's also called out publicly Adam Schiff, the Democratic senator from California, who, while serving in the House, led the first impeachment trial against Trump.
--:-- Sadie Gurman: And you've also reported that he wants to launch this other investigation against Soros and liberal funders.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Yeah, that's right. The Justice Department has also been directing prosecutors to go after left-leaning groups, those particularly critics and skeptics of the administration.
--:-- Sadie Gurman: And so right off the bat, a senior Justice Department official directed prosecutors in the field to think of ways to investigate the Soros Foundation, accusing it of bankrolling some of the protests that we seen against Trump administration policies
--:-- Ryan Knutson: The philanthropic foundation that George Soros founded Open Society said in a statement that the move was an effort to silence Trump critics and said that its activities are peaceful and lawful
--:-- Sadie Gurman: The person who's in charge of moving these investigations forward is Pam Bondi, Trump's attorney general.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And before Comey's indictment, Trump posted a message on Truth Social that called her out directly, saying that she was moving too slowly.
--:-- Sadie Gurman: The president wrote, we can't delay any longer. It's killing our reputation and credibility. And justice must be served now.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: He basically says justice must be served in all capital letters. And this is a post that's directed toward the attorney general.
--:-- Sadie Gurman: And I just don't think that there's any more explicit pressure that Trump has put on any of his officials that I've seen.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: How has Trump justified all of this?
--:-- Sadie Gurman: Trump repeatedly in meetings has brought up the state and federal criminal prosecutions that he faced, including two that were brought by the Justice Department last year.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: I mean, even in his post to Bondi, he says, they impeached me twice and indicted me over nothing.
--:-- Sadie Gurman: Trump has been saying for a long time that he's the victim of a politically motivated justice system.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: How is what he's doing now different from other presidents?
--:-- Sadie Gurman: Other presidents at least tried to maintain the appearance that they were giving independence to the Justice Department and not meddling in criminal investigations.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: At the Justice Department, there are a series of rules that were put in place after Watergate that are designed to insulate it from this kind of partisan pressure.
--:-- Sadie Gurman: But by doing this, Trump has just barreled through all of those norms.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: It seems like there's a certain amount of resistance within the Justice Department to bring these charges against Comey.
--:-- Sadie Gurman: What is your sense of how likely it will be that we'll see other indictments of the other people that Trump is calling out here like Adam Schiff and Letitia James?
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Well, uh, you know a week ago I might have answered this differently but now I think we will see those prosecutions and when we do I think that you will see career people trying to duck out of it and stay as far away from them as possible and they're going to be handled by Trump appointees and signed by Trump appointees
--:-- Sadie Gurman: And I think basically this is a model for how they might unfold.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: What do you expect will happen next? Because if these appointees might bring these charges, there's still the rest of the legal system that has to unfold.
--:-- Sadie Gurman: There's still presumably a jury that will have to look at the evidence and weigh in here.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: That's right. It's going to be up to the legal system to decide whether Comey's guilty.
--:-- Sadie Gurman: And if they bring a weak case before a jury, that's going to be a huge embarrassment for the Justice Department.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: What do you think that will mean for the institution going forward?
--:-- Sadie Gurman: Well, I think this will seriously strain the Justice Department's credibility going forward because, you know, the general public wants to believe that criminal cases are being brought for legitimate reasons.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And if it's abundantly clear that this case was brought because Trump made it happen and directed the Justice Department to do so, then it will raise doubts about other future criminal cases, even in matters that are not as high profile.
--:-- Sadie Gurman: I mean, none of this is good for the institution. You know, what this does is it sets a precedent for future administrations, Democratic or Republican, to direct the Justice Department to do what they want and turn it into a weapon against their enemies, no matter the party.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And so over time, I think this just erodes the credibility of the Justice Department and its ability to bring cases that people think are legitimate.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: That's all for today. Monday, September 29th. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal.
--:-- Sadie Gurman: Additional reporting in this episode by Josh Dossie, Aruna Vishwanatha, Annie Linsky, and Meredith McGraw.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.
