President Donald Trump recently ordered his attorney general to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey, and tonight, the Department of Justice delivered an indictment of Comey for lying to Congress. Comey, for his part, insists on his innocence. But the charges against Comey are not just about the president’s abuse of his power for personal retribution. They represent a test of the president’s plans for the future.
Since the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Trump and his top aides have spoken of their plans to bring cases against people who give money to anti-Trump causes. “My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials, and everyone else who brings order to our country,” Trump said on September 10.
In real life, there is no known evidence that any organization funded Kirk’s assassin. But there are donors to left-wing causes that Trump wants to defund. In the White House today, the president signed an order to investigate those donors. He cited the liberal donors Reid Hoffman and George Soros as potential targets. In April, Trump ordered an investigation of ActBlue, the Democratic fundraising platform.
Trump faces a very immediate problem. He and his family have already amassed an enormous fortune in the first nine months of his second term, in great part from gifts and deals with foreign powers. That behavior is likely to be investigated if Trump’s party loses control of either house of Congress in November 2026. Trump’s bad economic management has put that control at extreme risk. His overall approval numbers have dropped to the very low 40s; his economic management, to the mid-30s. Grocery prices are up, and electricity prices are rising even faster. If honest congressional elections were held today, the Republicans’ two-seat margin in the House of Representatives would vanish. The protective screens for Trump’s self-enrichment would vanish with it.
The president is driven by intense ego needs. He hates Comey for his role investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election—as he hates his own former national security adviser John Bolton for refusing to comply with his scheme to extort Ukraine in 2019.
But Trump is also a gifted survivor, with a keen instinct for the weaknesses of individuals and nations. The American justice system is only as good as the people who staff it. Led by Kash Patel and Pam Bondi, the system can be an abundant resource for a president who wants to use the law to frighten opponents away from the political process. Troops in the streets of Washington, D.C., have deterred residents from going to bars and restaurants in 2025. Those troops could be used to dissuade residents of blue cities in red states from standing in voting lines in 2026. Selective prosecution can be used to cut the flow of money to Democratic candidates.
Yes, Trump’s politicization of the Department of Justice is a backward-looking expression of hurt feelings. It’s also another step in a forward-looking plot to shred the rule of law in order to pervert the next election and protect his corruption from accountability. James Comey’s rights and liberties are not the only ones at risk today. So is your own right to participate in free and fair elections in order to render a verdict on Trump’s invasion of those rights and liberties. Trump understands the stakes—and has been astoundingly transparent about his intentions. Will you listen and understand as clearly as he speaks and threatens?
