There was a time when “indicting a former FBI Director” would have been the kind of storyline you read in paperback thrillers at the airport newsstand, usually involving shadowy double agents, a safe house in Prague, and a protagonist who knows too much. Now it’s just Thursday in Alexandria, Virginia.
A federal grand jury has charged James Comey with two felonies: lying to Congress and obstructing its proceedings. Allegedly, in 2020, he denied authorizing an FBI official to moonlight as an anonymous source. Prosecutors now say that denial was itself a lie, and that Comey then impeded oversight in the process. Cue the statutory citations, the solemn intonations of accountability, and the political theater tickets going on resale at scalper prices.
The maximum exposure? Five years in prison. The likely guidelines? A stern letter, probation, and a cautionary podcast deal. But the statutory math isn’t the point. The point is power—and how much fun it is to watch it exercised when you’ve been promising retribution for almost a decade.
If Lying to Congress Is a Crime, Clear Out the Entire Trump Cabinet
Because if we’re going to suddenly enforce the “no fibbing before lawmakers” rule, someone should probably dust off a very large jail cell block. Remember the parades of Trump administration nominees who looked senators in the eye and swore eternal allegiance to facts, duty, and restraint—then proceeded to torch those vows like kindling?
Cabinet secretaries who swore they would uphold independence, then acted like personal attorneys. Agency heads who promised transparency, then redacted entire departments. Environmental stewards who vowed to protect resources, then auctioned off drilling rights with the enthusiasm of a game show host. Education officials who claimed to care about public schools, then turned classrooms into grifting grounds.
If testimony under oath is suddenly sacred, then the perjury hall of fame is about to get crowded. The sheer volume of contradictions between what was promised in confirmation hearings and what was delivered in office could keep federal prosecutors in overtime until the sun burns out. And yet somehow, only Comey gets the handcuffs? It’s almost as if the “rule of law” is less about consistency and more about choreography.
Act I: How to Indict a Man in Three Easy Steps
Step one: wait until the five-year statute of limitations is about to expire, then swap out the skeptical U.S. Attorney for one who wouldn’t know prosecutorial discretion if it served them a subpoena. Step two: instruct your Attorney General—Pam Bondi, freshly polished from cable news panels—to deliver a speech about accountability that sounds less like jurisprudence and more like a campaign rally with extra Latin phrases. Step three: have your FBI Director, Kash Patel, announce that the Bureau is finally clean now that it’s prosecuting its own former boss.
Voilà: Comey indicted, case number assigned, norms sacrificed at the altar of showmanship.
Act II: The Chorus of Accountability
The DOJ statement read like a press release written with trembling hands. Bondi said, “No one is above the law.” Patel followed up with, “We’re restoring public trust.” Which is rich, considering both were selected less for their prosecutorial chops and more for their audition tapes in the Church of Trump Loyalty.
President Trump, meanwhile, played the world’s worst dinner theater emcee: praising the indictment, insisting he had nothing to do with it, then proceeding to monologue about how Comey was “sick” and “bad” and how justice was finally being served cold, preferably on live television. If this is impartial justice, then I’m the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Reality TV.
On the other side, Democrats lined up to issue press releases dripping with words like “politicization” and “weaponization,” which is Beltway-speak for “we see the gun pointed at us and we don’t like it.” Jamie Raskin, ever the constitutional conscience, warned that prosecutorial power was now officially a partisan instrument. He didn’t need to add “I told you so”—the smirk was implied.
Act III: The Timeline, Or How to Milk a Deadline
- First, reports leak that prosecutors in Virginia are divided about indicting Comey. Some say the evidence is weak; others say the case is political suicide.
- Second, the White House publicly demands the indictment, because why whisper when you can shout it from a podium?
- Third, the U.S. Attorney is replaced with a loyalist whose résumé reads less like “career prosecutor” and more like “personal retainer.”
- Fourth, the grand jury obligingly returns a two-count indictment just before the clock runs out.
- Fifth, Bondi and Patel strike their “rule of law” poses while Trump grins like a man watching his revenge fantasy turn into matinee reality.
- Sixth, Democrats scream about norms, Comey insists on his innocence, and the rest of the country shrugs, wondering whether this is Season Eight or Nine of the same interminable show.
The timeline doesn’t read like justice. It reads like choreography.
Act IV: Norms, Shmorms
The big question: what does this do to the Justice Department? The answer: the same thing a wrecking ball does to drywall.
- Prosecutorial Discretion: Once upon a time, cases were judged on evidence. Now they’re judged on whether the president snarled about them on social media that week.
- Separation of Powers: Congress asks questions, a witness answers, and five years later the executive branch decides that answer is a felony. Oversight turns into booby trap.
- Public Trust: Americans are supposed to believe that this isn’t payback for firing Trump in 2017. Good luck selling that.
- Precedent: If an FBI Director can be indicted years later because his testimony annoyed the ruling party, imagine the fun we’ll have when it’s senators, judges, or random school board officials next in line.
This isn’t Watergate behind closed doors. This is Watergate with a press kit and a TikTok strategy.
Act V: The Comedy of Comey
James Comey, the man who already occupies more contradictory roles in history than a Shakespearean fool—election spoiler, Deep State villain, reluctant truth-teller, moralistic memo-writer—is now positioned as defendant. He says he’s heartbroken for DOJ but trusts the courts. Which is exactly the kind of noble statement you expect from a man who still writes his own drafts in longhand.
His critics cheer, his defenders sigh, and the public mostly wonders whether we can survive another trial of the century when the last five “trials of the century” are still unresolved.
Act VI: Trump’s Victory Lap
This indictment isn’t just law—it’s theater. It’s Trump finally checking a box from his long to-do list of revenge: “Prosecute Comey.” He has wanted this since the day Comey leaked those memos about awkward loyalty dinners and presidential demands.
Trump’s genius here is plausible deniability with a wink. He says, “The DOJ decides.” Then he turns around and calls Comey a traitor and a crook. The audience knows the wink is the real message. The script was always written in Sharpie.
Act VII: Watergate, But Make It Broadway
The parallels to Watergate are too easy. Back then, the crime was covered up. Now the cover-up is unnecessary. It’s all done in public, with cameras rolling and applause lines tested. Nixon tried to hide tapes; Trump tries to trend hashtags. Nixon resigned in disgrace; Trump fundraises off indictments like they’re Kickstarter perks.
This isn’t the slow burn of corruption. It’s corruption as content. Watergate was whispered in parking garages. This sequel is live-streamed with theme music. And the worst part? Half the country is too exhausted to boo.
Act VIII: The Authoritarian Drift
Let’s drop the satire mask for one second: this is how fascism creeps. It doesn’t always arrive jackboot-first. Sometimes it comes in the form of procedural justifications, “accountability” language, and solemn announcements about the “rule of law” from people who wouldn’t know a rule if it smacked them with a gavel.
Weaponizing DOJ to prosecute political enemies is the quiet normalization of authoritarianism. It’s the lesson learned from Hungary, from Turkey, from every illiberal democracy sliding into strongman status. You don’t need camps or coups when you can hollow out institutions from the inside and use their legitimacy as camouflage.
The new standard is clear: if you cross the president, years later you may be indicted for whatever can be retrofitted into a felony. Not because the evidence is ironclad, but because vengeance is evergreen. That’s not just politicization—it’s deterrence. It’s intimidation dressed as justice. And it tells every future whistleblower, every potential dissenter, every ambitious bureaucrat: stay silent, or we’ll find something to charge you with.
This isn’t accountability. It’s the rehearsal dinner for authoritarianism.
Act IX: The Fascism Checklist
Political scientists love their checklists for creeping fascism, and this indictment checks far too many boxes:
- Personalization of Justice: Prosecution of individuals not because of conduct, but because of conflict with the leader.
- Replacement of Independent Officials: Career prosecutor out, loyalist in, case suddenly advances.
- Reframing Oversight as Crime: Congressional testimony becomes prosecutable if inconvenient.
- Normalization of Retaliation: Supporters cheer not the merits but the punishment of an enemy.
- Spectacle over Substance: Trials not as mechanisms for truth, but as symbols of dominance.
Once these moves become normalized, they don’t get rolled back. They become precedent, a new normal. And authoritarianism thrives on precedent: if it was done once, it can be done again, faster, bigger, harsher.
Act X: Why This Is More Dangerous Than Just “Politics”
Some will shrug: “All administrations politicize DOJ.” But that’s like saying “all toddlers make a mess.” Yes, but not every toddler lights the curtains on fire for the fun of it.
The Comey indictment isn’t mere partisanship. It’s precedent. It tells us that the Justice Department is no longer even pretending to be separate. It tells us that the White House can demand prosecutions, swap prosecutors, and weaponize statutory technicalities against enemies—all while insisting with a straight face that the process is pure.
If this continues, elections stop being about policy and start being about survival. Lose power, gain charges. Switch majorities, switch indictments. The courtroom becomes the new campaign trail, and justice becomes a permanent hostage.
That is not democracy. That is the criminalization of opposition—the calling card of every authoritarian state in history.
Act XI: The Punchline That Isn’t Funny
The real cost isn’t James Comey’s freedom. It’s the normalization of vengeance prosecutions. It’s the idea that every oversight hearing is just a prelude to indictment if the wrong person wins the next election. It’s the collapse of trust in a Justice Department that once, however imperfectly, pretended to stand apart.
We’re not just replaying Watergate. We’re watching its ghost do a tap dance in broad daylight, daring anyone to stop clapping.
Watergate With the Lights On
A grand jury indicted James Comey for lying to Congress and obstructing its work. DOJ leaders framed it as accountability, Trump praised it as vindication, and Democrats decried it as politicization. The timing, the replacement of prosecutors, and the public pressure from the White House all make the case less about law and more about spectacle. This isn’t just history repeating—it’s history remixed for prime time, where accountability is indistinguishable from payback and the rule of law has been repurposed as campaign content. The deeper danger is authoritarian drift: when prosecutions become weapons, dissent becomes peril, and justice itself becomes theater. It isn’t just bad politics. It’s the soft launch of fascism, performed live on America’s biggest stage.