OPINION:
Democratic talking points insist President Trump is out for revenge. They say he hired former beauty queen Lindsey Halligan to pursue his enemies, even though she is in way over her head.
It turns out Ms. Halligan is more than just a pretty face. Unlike the slapdash legal work done to persecute Mr. Trump during the previous administration, her latest court filing paints a damning portrait of James B. Comey’s alleged deeds.
Notes scribbled in the former FBI director’s own hand establish his knowledge of Hillary Clinton’s plot to tar Mr. Trump as an agent of Russia. When asked about the same in a congressional proceeding, he insisted, under oath, “that doesn’t ring any bells with me.”
Sen. Charles E. Grassley then asked Mr. Comey whether he “ever authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports about the Trump investigation or the Clinton investigation,” he replied “no” and “never.”
FBI records suggest otherwise. Mr. Comey designated Daniel Richman, a Columbia Law School professor, a special government employee for the sole purpose of leaking on his behalf to tractable journalists at outlets such as The New York Times.
This was already known. Mr. Comey previously admitted that, after Mr. Trump fired him, he authorized his operative to circulate the confidential memos he wrote documenting his conversations with the president. “I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel,” Mr. Comey said.
It worked. Special counsel Robert Mueller was tapped to drag out the discussion of Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia — ties that existed only in the salacious Steele dossier fabricated at the direction of Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign.
What’s new is that the paper trail shows how carefully Mr. Comey covered the tracks of this extensive scheme. He used a Gmail account under the pseudonym Reinhold Niebuhr, a liberal 20th-century theologian, to direct Mr. Richman’s activities, evading his duty to preserve official communications.
Someone locked Mr. Comey’s revealing notes in a safe in Room 9582 of the Hoover Building, a mysterious location that also happened to contain a trove of material related to investigations of Mr. Trump from Russiagate to the Mar-a-Lago raid. The latter were found in “burn bags” marking the items for destruction.
Access logs confirm the room was last entered days before Mr. Trump’s second inauguration. It’s possible nobody expected the location would be discovered — at least, not before the statute of limitations expired. Mr. Comey’s indictment was filed on the last viable day.
FBI Director Kash Patel’s decision to sweep the entire headquarters wasn’t anticipated.
The name “Mitch” appears at the top of Mr. Comey’s handwritten memo, referring perhaps to the code name of FBI informant Stefan Halper. Mr. Halper spun the implausible tale that Gen. Michael Flynn had an illicit dalliance with a woman in Moscow, triggering an international media frenzy.
“Comey paid his operatives to falsely smear me as a Russian spy who had an affair with President Trump’s National Security Advisor. I was a new mom. My husband had to deal with Comey’s NYT ‘reporters’ to deny this, as I was too sick from child birth to speak,” historian Svetlana Lokhova wrote on X.
Mr. Trump was accused of incorrectly logging a legal expense in a ledger and exaggerating his assets when applying for a loan from banks thrilled to have his business. Twisting those victimless infractions into felonies is what a vindictive prosecution looks like.
Mr. Comey’s alleged victims deserve justice.
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