‘My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Trump’

“My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump, but we couldn’t imagine ourselves living any other way. We will not live on our knees, and you shouldn’t either,” the former FBI director said.

In his thirst for revenge, Trump has not constrained himself to pursuing the man he fired weeks into his first presidency. Comey’s crime was his refusal to drop the FBI investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 race and ties to the Trump campaign. The “Russiagate” scandal would engulf Trump’s first term in the White House.

“My motto is: Always get even,” Trump wrote in his 2007 book, Think Big and Kick Ass: in Business and Life. “When somebody screws you, screw them back in spades.”

In the president’s eyes, Comey and his family are all legitimate targets. Months before last Thursday’s bombshell indictment, Comey’s daughter, Maurene, who was the federal prosecutor behind hundreds of cases including the prosecutions of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, was also fired.

Maurene sued the Trump administration to get her job back earlier this month, claiming her dismissal was politically motivated. The lawsuit revealed that after she was dismissed in July, Maurene entered the Public Corruption Unit offices in New York to find colleagues “visibly shocked and upset by the news”.

When US attorney Jay Clayton arrived, Maurene asked why she had been fired. “All I can say is it came from Washington,” Clayton replied, according to the lawsuit. “I can’t tell you anything else.”

Last week’s indictment also prompted the resignation of Troy Edwards, a senior federal prosecutor in Virginia who is married to one of Comey’s other daughters. Edwards was part of the prosecution team that convicted Stewart Rhodes, head of the far-right Oath Keepers militia, over his role in the plot to storm the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 as Trump fought to cling on to power. Trump pardoned Rhodes and other far-right leaders along with most of those involved in the riot on his first day back in office.

In a one-sentence resignation ­letter, Edwards said that he had quit his job “to uphold my oath to the Constitution and the country”.

Comey has said that in his family it is a running joke that when he is insulted in the street, he is unsure if his abuser hails from the left or right.

Hillary Clinton still blames him for her defeat in the 2016 presidential election. His dramatic announcement, a week before polling day, that he was reopening an investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server is widely seen as the late twist that tipped the race in Trump’s favour. Many Democrats will never forgive him.

But it is the feud with Trump which followed that has left Comey facing federal charges and pitched America into a dangerous new era as the president directs the full force of the justice department (DoJ) against his political enemies. The irony is not lost on Comey that, but for him, Trump might never have been president at all.

Trump threatened criminal prosecution of his opponents during his first term. Back then, however, it was mere bluster. Trump did not wield the same power or nurse the same grievances he does today after the string of criminal indictments and civil lawsuits that followed his 2020 defeat.

Now, in an unprecedented moment for the country, Trump has taken the revenge he had threatened. Days before the indictment, Trump had publicly exhorted Pam Bondi, his attorney general, to charge Comey and other political opponents.

“We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”

Legal experts believe the charges levelled against Comey – linked to his testimony to a 2020 congressional hearing on “Russiagate” – are flimsy, but said that a line has been crossed. One former DoJ staffer called it a “Rubicon moment” for America.

“Charging Comey after Trump’s demands destroys the independence the Department of Justice has long treasured,” said Barbara McQuade, a former US attorney in Michigan who was nominated by Barack Obama.

“This indictment does severe damage to public confidence in the department’s integrity, and maybe that’s the point. Maybe Trump is betting that if indictments lose their stigma, then he can erase the stain of his own criminal cases.”

Trump celebrated Comey’s indictment on Truth Social: “JUSTICE IN AMERICA!” adding: “One of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to.” He has since called Comey a “dirty cop” and a “slime ball”.

Further indictments of Trump opponents appear certain. Questioned about the public pressure on Bondi last week, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt made plain that Trump sought retribution against those he blames for past legal troubles. “It is not weaponising the Department of Justice to demand accountability for those who weaponised the Department of Justice,” Leavitt said.

Trump is already lining up new targets, including California senator Adam Schiff, who led Trump’s first impeachment, and New York attorney general Letitia James, who brought a civil fraud case against him. For the president, the final result may matter less than the thrill of payback. Everyone on Trump’s enemies list faces an exhausting and expensive legal battle.

“It’s not a list, but I expect there’ll be others,” the president told reporters nonchalantly as he arrived in New York state to watch the Ryder Cup on Friday. “I mean, they’re corrupt.”

With the Rubicon crossed, however, opponents fear Trump’s campaign of retribution could dismantle the rule of law altogether. In the wake of the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, the president has ordered a crackdown on leftwing groups and those who fund them. Federal prosecutors are reportedly circling Open Society Foundations, the nonprofit funded by George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist and Democrat megadonor.

Targeting Soros could throttle funding to the Democratic party heading into next year’s crucial midterm election campaign, when control of Congress is back up for grabs. A Democratic majority in the House of Representatives would see Trump impeached for a third time and another raft of investigations. Many in the White House and justice department will do whatever it takes to stop that happening.

Tellingly, the James Comey indictment bore just a solitary signature. Lindsey Halligan, left, a 36-year-old former insurance lawyer and Miss Colorado contestant with no prosecutorial experience, was appointed the US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia last week with the express purpose of charging Comey.

Her predecessor, veteran the prosecutor Erik Siebert, who was a Trump nominee, refused to bring the charges and resigned under pressure from the president. Halligan was reportedly presented with Siebert’s findings that there was insufficient evidence to support a case. She did it anyway. No career prosecutor was willing to put their name to the document.

Photograph by Carolyn Kaster/AP