Legal experts said the case appeared to be weak. They noted that it only went forward after Trump publicly pressured Attorney General Pam Bondi to act and replaced the US attorney handling the matter with one of his former personal lawyers.
But the outcome might be less important to Trump than the legal process it has kicked off.
“It may be that Trump doesn’t care whether Comey is convicted, so long as he feels the personal pain and humiliation of being indicted and having to defend himself in court,” said Barbara McQuade, a University of Michigan law professor who served as a US attorney during the Obama administration.
Trump knows those feelings after facing several high-profile legal court cases in recent years, on top of twice being impeached.
FBI agents searched his Florida home in 2022 amid a dispute over classified documents they alleged he improperly retained after leaving office. A year later, Trump was fingerprinted and had his mugshot taken after being booked on felony charged in Atlanta in a case involving his alleged attempt to overturn the 2020 election results there. And he sat in in Manhattan courtrooms for two separate New York state trials — one civil, one criminal — in 2024.
With those indignities stamped into his memory, Trump is seeking vengeance for the perceived wrongs he faced, said Ty Cobb, an attorney who served on the president’s White House legal team at the start of his first term. And, Comey is one of his top targets.
“It doesn’t take much to become a Trump enemy, and once you are, some degree of retribution is virtually certain to the extent he has an opportunity,“ said Cobb. ”He’s created opportunities out of whole cloth. Here, unfortunately, the cloth that he used was the Constitution as he ripped it into shreds.”
The Justice Department is supposed to act based on the law, not on political pressure or personal animus. In a landmark 1940 speech posted on the agency’s website, then-Attorney General Robert H. Jackson warned US attorneys of “the most dangerous power of the prosecutor: that he will pick people he thinks he should get, rather than pick cases that need to be prosecuted.”
But Edward R. Martin Jr., whom Trump named as director of the Justice Department’s Weaponization Working Group, offered a different perspective this spring, suggesting public humiliation could be part of the punishment for people the administration believed improperly used government power.
“There are some really bad actors, some people that did some really bad things to the American people, and if they can be charged, we will charge them,” he told reporters in May. “But if they can’t be charged, we will name them … and in a culture that respects shame, they should be people that are shamed.”
Michael Cohen, Trump’s former longtime personal attorney and fixer, knows the personal ramifications of facing legal charges. He said Trump is looking to inflict them on Comey as a warning to all his opponents. Cohen served time in federal prison after pleading guilty in 2018 to charges of campaign finance violations, lying to Congress, and other crimes.
“The mugshots, the headlines, the endless court dates; this isn’t about justice, it’s about humiliation,” Cohen, who has become an outspoken Trump opponent, wrote on Substack Friday. “Once you’re indicted, your life is no longer yours. You’re trapped in a legal grinder that eats your time, your money, your dignity. And Trump is gleefully feeding Comey into that machine, just to watch him squirm.”
Comey has long been at or near the top of Trump’s list of perceived enemies. Trump fired him in May 2017 amid the FBI’s investigation of possible collusion between his campaign and Russian operatives during the 2016 presidential election.
“It was a great honor for me to fire, I will tell you this, a great honor to fire James Comey, a great, great honor … there was no better day,” Trump said in his speech at the Justice Department in March. “He was a terrible person, did terrible things and persecuted people, and all in the guise of being an angel. But he wasn’t an angel.”
In recent days, Justice Department prosecutors reportedly told higher-ups there was insufficient evidence to charge Comey. Then last Saturday, Trump took to his social media platform and urged Bondi to take action on Comey and two other opponents, California Democratic Senator Adam Schiff and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
“What about Comey, Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff, Leticia??? They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”
The Comey indictment was handed up on Thursday, just ahead of the five-year statute of limitations deadline on Comey’s congressional testimony. In a video response to the indictment, Comey said, “There are costs to standing up to Donald Trump,” and asserted his innocence.
“My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system,” Comey said. “I’m innocent, so let’s have a trial. And keep the faith.”
On Friday, Trump told reporters the move was “about justice, not revenge.” He added, “There’s not a list, but I think there’ll be others” who will face charges.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said the Trump administration was trying to “restore integrity” the the justice system.
“It is the ultimate hypocrisy to accuse President Trump of what Joe Biden actively did throughout his presidency: engaging in lawfare against his political opponents,” she said. “The indictment against Comey speaks for itself, and the Trump administration looks forward to fair proceedings in the courts.”
Trump’s threat of more prosecutions, coming on top of Comey’s indictment, alarms Senator Peter Welch, a Vermont Democrat who serves on the Judiciary Committee.
“There is no mystery what’s going on,” he said. “He absolutely sees the Justice Department as his tool to be used as he wants for his reasons.”
Trump’s goal with Comey and other people he views as his enemies is to get them to spend money on their legal defense, publicly humiliate them, and send them to jail, Welch said.
“This has nothing to do with evidence. It has everything to do with vengeance,” he said. As proof of that, Welch said that Trump’s own statements risk derailing a Comey prosecution because they show political interference.
McQuade agreed that Comey’s attorneys could use Trump’s comments to undermine the case against him. She also noted that during Trump’s first term, the Justice Department declined to prosecute Comey following an inspector general’s investigation into the alleged leak that said “the overwhelming weight” of circumstantial evidence supported Comey’s version of events surrounding it.
“In light of the inspector general report concluding that Comey did not authorize a leak, it is hard to see this case as anything but baseless. The fact that Trump‘s appointed US attorney resigned rather than bring the charges, and that his newly appointed US attorney had to go into the grand jury room and sign the indictment herself screams out that this case is one no ethical prosecutor wants to touch,” McQuade said. “The president’s statements provide evidence that this case was brought for improper political purposes, which could help Comey succeed in getting the case dismissed for selective prosecution.”
Cobb said that Trump is likely confident Comey will be convicted because that’s his persona and that a desire to publicly humiliate him is probably part of the goal of the prosecution.
“What he knows is he hates him and would like to punish him in any way possible,” Cobb said.