AP Photo/Evan Vucci
National Review, one of the country’s foremost and long-running conservative publications, took President Donald Trump to task over his use of the Department of Justice to seek revenge in an editorial published on Tuesday.
The missive against Trump’s lawfare campaign came after Trump posted the following message, seemingly addressed to Attorney General Pam Bondi, on Truth Social:
Pam: I have reviewed over 30 statements and posts saying that, essentially, “same old story as last time, all talk, no action. Nothing is being done. What about Comey, Adam “Shifty” Schiff, Leticia?? They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done.” Then we almost put in a Democrat supported U.S. Attorney, in Virginia, with a really bad Republican past. A Woke RINO, who was never going to do his job. That’s why two of the worst Dem Senators PUSHED him so hard. He even lied to the media and said he quit, and that we had no case. No, I fired him, and there is a GREAT CASE, and many lawyers, and legal pundits, say so. Lindsey Halligan is a really good lawyer, and likes you, a lot. We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!! President DJT
The editorial began with the assertion that “President Trump’s weekend social media post pressuring Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute his political enemies is an outrage against the Constitution’s guarantees of due process and equal protection under the law,” and went on to argue that he’s “grossly disregarding” the practice of allowing “the administration of justice in individual cases proceeds without political interference.”
It continued:
Disturbingly, Trump indicated that he wants indictments of his antagonists because of carping from his base, which is complaining of the “same old story” as his last term, when there were no prosecutions of Russiagate’s prime movers. As the president should know better than anyone, having been spared potentially serious felony prosecutions by the Supreme Court’s July 2024 immunity ruling, abuses of power — unless they involve traditional corruption crimes, such as bribery — are nigh impossible to prosecute in court. In our system, misconduct such as Comey’s is left to internal discipline (Trump fired Comey in 2017) and to congressional remedies.
Moreover, as Trump should know from James’s fraud case against him — which Democratic prosecutors at the state and federal level declined to charge criminally — misrepresentations on financial documents, such as those he alleges against James and Schiff, do not rise to the level of felony fraud prosecutions absent compelling evidence of intent to defraud and, usually, proof of actual victims. That would hamstring prosecutors on the James and Schiff matters even if the stale transactions were not plagued by statute-of-limitations problems.
“If a president issues lawless orders, the honorable course is for subordinates to resign rather than carry them out, or try to persuade the president to relent. If Bondi is not disposed toward the former, we hope she is trying the latter,” concluded the conservative magazine. “In the meantime, Democrats could become more persuasive advocates against lawfare if they repented for their own. As for Republicans, they ought to imitate last week’s worthy rebuke of FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, by Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas), for leveraging his power against Trump critics. The first party to figure out the public’s disdain for lawfare will be doing itself, and the country, a great service.”
The post ‘An Outrage’: National Review Torches Trump Over His Quest for Revenge first appeared on Mediaite.
