The bleak reality of the petty revenge rampage
Oct. 20, 2025, 6:00 AM EDT
By Hayes Brown, MSNBC Opinion Writer/Editor
More than any other president before him, Donald Trump has sought to put the “petty” in “petty tyrant.” In the last month, he’s checked several names off his perceived enemies list as the Justice Department has indicted former FBI Director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James and, most recently, former national security adviser John Bolton. As disturbing as it is to witness the Department of Justice turned against Trump’s critics, the specific allegations being against those critics display either a startling lack of creativity on the part of Trump and his allies or a dedication to parallelism that would usually be relegated to the realm of supervillain gimmicks.
In Bolton’s indictment, handed up Tuesday by a federal grand jury in Maryland, we see a set of charges orders of magnitude less staggering in their blatant criminality than the allegations Trump faced after his first term for hoarding documents at Mar-a-Lago. James and Comey are also facing minor-league versions of the big-league crimes and civil infractions Trump was accused of.
James, who successfully brought a civil case against the Trump Organization for fraudulently obtaining mortgages from banks, has herself been charged with bank fraud. Likewise, Comey, who refused to stop the Russia investigation that saw several of Trump’s cohort charged with lying to Congress, is now himself accused of lying to Congress. Bolton, Comey and James have all pleaded not guilty to the charges they face.
It’s a level of “I’m rubber and you’re glue” absurdity akin to if Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who successfully secured a 34-count conviction against Trump last year, were to himself be charged with election fraud ...
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-doj-comey-james-bolton-indictments-rcna238195