Comey Is The New Kimmel

The similarities between what drives and underlies Trump’s attacks are striking

Headlines everywhere today proclaim that former FBI Director James Comey has been indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice. They remind me of the headlines after Jimmy Kimmel was suspended, which breathlessly reported that ABC had pulled his show because of “insensitive remarks” about Charlie Kirk.

This demonstrates, yet again, that the media doesn’t know how to responsibly report the news in the era of Trump. Telling us a “fact” that was manufactured by Trump and his cronies doesn’t really tell us what actually happened.

So let’s zoom out and discuss what’s really going on. From where I sit, Comey’s indictment very much resembles Trump’s latest blunder with Kimmel. And it may well also backfire on Trump just as spectacularly.

Lackeys and their dirty work

After Comey was indicted yesterday on two counts by a grand jury, Trump crowed on social media calling Comey “one of the worst beings this Country has ever been exposed to” and promising that he is “now at the beginning of being held responsible for his Crimes against our Nation.”

Trump also ran a victory lap when Kimmel was suspended, congratulating ABC for “finally having the courage to do what had to be done” but had to eat those words not long afterwards.

But neither of these actions against Kimmel and Comey happened on their own. In both cases, Trump got his way by putting a lackey in charge who was willing to bend all the rules and to violate law and norms.

For Kimmel, that was FCC Chair Brendan Carr, who went on right-wing host Benny Johnson’s podcast to illegally threaten to yank the licenses of any broadcasters that aired Kimmel.

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr warned. “There’s actions we can take on licensed broadcasters. It’s long past the time that… Comcast and Disney say ‘We’re not gonna run Kimmel anymore… because we licensed broadcasters are running the possibility of fines or license revocation from the FCC.’”

For Comey, the lackey was Lindsey Halligan, an insurance claims lawyer who was formerly Trump’s personal attorney. Trump put her in charge of the case even though she has no prosecuting experience. Worse still, he hired her to replace Erik Siebert, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, who was pushed out after he concluded there was no probable cause to bring charges against Comey.

Like Carr, Halligan followed Trump’s orders, rather than the law. And like Carr, she is likely going to find herself in pretty hot water ahead. After all, what she did on Trump’s bequest is basically indefensible. It could even result a successful motion to dismiss the entire case for selective prosecution, and there could be sanctions leveled against Halligan for bringing a case that lacked merit, as she was told expressly by Siebert’s colleagues. (This may explain why her signature appears alone on the indictment.)

Don’t get it twisted

It’s also important to note that for both Kimmel and Comey, the underlying allegations against them are decidedly weak sauce.

Despite the misleading headlines, Kimmel wasn’t suspended because of his “insensitivity” over Charlie Kirk. If you look at his actual statements, he spoke truthfully about how the right was trying to score political points and avoid any association with the shooter:

“We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” Kimmel said.

No, Kimmel was suspended because he made fun of Trump, airing a clip of Trump’s bizarre response to a reporter’s question about Kirk. Trump said he was holding up “very good” then immediately pivoted to talk about the new White House ballroom.

Similarly, Comey was charged not because he lied to Congress (he didn’t); he was prosecuted because he pissed Trump off during the Russia election interference investigation in 2017, in part because Comey refused to say publicly that Trump was not a subject of that investigation.

Here’s the short version of why the Comey indictment will fail. The indictment claims Comey lied to the Senate about authorizing a Wall Street Journal leak. But an Inspector General report actually found no evidence that he lied. Instead, the report indicated that it was former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe who authorized the leak, then repeatedly misled both Comey and investigators about it. McCabe even later publicly admitted that he had failed to correct Comey’s mistaken belief about the leak.

Because Comey’s testimony about the leak relied on McCabe’s false assurances, the perjury and obstruction case against Comey is extremely weak sauce.

Both the Kimmel and Comey matters demonstrate an important point. Trump isn’t interested in what actually happened or what either man actually said. Truth is irrelevant to this man. He wants them punished because they crossed him, plain and simple.

Fortunately we still have a Constitution and a judicial system that stand very much in Trump’s way.

A bully singles out targets, but the courageous stand up to him

Autocrats like Trump know that they can’t take everyone on at once. Concerted, organized resistance is the ultimate and most effective response to his assertions of power. Trump tries to keep everyone in line by selectively punishing a few people to make examples of them, then hoping everyone else does the rest of his work by capitulating in advance.

This has worked spectacularly well with big institutions like law firms, big tech and major universities. And it was about to work with yet another media company until the people made it more painful for Disney/ABC to fold than to fight. It turns out mass subscription cancellations and boycotts really do work.

After being reinstated to his show, Kimmel proved his mettle by pulling no punches. His opening monologue upon his return took aim once again at Trump, with a zinger for the ages: “He tried his best to cancel me; instead he forced millions of people to watch the show. That backfired bigly. He might have to release the Epstein files to distract us from this now.”

Kimmel in fact has now over 20 million views on that monologue on YouTube.

With Comey, upon hearing the news of his own indictment, the former FBI Director (who is no one on the left’s favorite person after 2016) proved he may still have a part to play in the resistance. He recorded a message that underscored that he is not afraid of 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.

“Somebody that I love dearly recently said that fear is the tool of a tyrant. And she’s right. But I’m not afraid. And I hope you’re not either.”

The next part is up to us

The national conversation Trump began after he attacked Jimmy Kimmel isn’t what Trump wanted. Rather than focus on what Kimmel said or didn’t say about Kirk, it quickly became about whether we as a nation truly believe in free speech.

Angry Disney+ subscribers made their voices heard by cancelling subscriptions. Disney’s stock began to tank. And voices from both the right and the left condemned Kimmel’s suspension as a violation of a core right to freedom of speech guaranteed to us all under the First Amendment.

Even Joe Rogan and Sen. Ted Cruz came out swinging, warning of the dangers of censorship, while giving us all the discomfiting sensation of agreeing with them.

With Comey’s indictment, Trump very much wants this to be about whether the former FBI Director did or didn’t lie to Congress, and whether he will or won’t go to jail. But as with Kimmel, we the people (and you the media, if you are reading this) need to make this all about Trump. The Comey indictment is about the President abusing his power and politicizing the Justice Department in an unacceptable and un-American way.

We’ve already proven that Trump is beatable, not just in a court of law but in the court of public opinion. He lost control of the Kimmel narrative, and he could well lose control of the Comey one, too, if we truly and concertedly make this about the importance of Justice Department independence.

It was a secret tape during Watergate that brought Nixon down. It showed he was meddling with the investigation into the DNC headquarters break-in by ordering it shut down. Today, we have Trump openly and brazenly doing far worse: firing a U.S. Attorney who had only just determined there was insufficient probable cause to charge Comey, then bringing in someone else willing to do Trump’s bidding no matter what the evidence showed.

So let’s remember what the real headlines are and what these fights are really about. It wasn’t over whether Kimmel was insensitive toward Kirk but rather whether the White House was brazenly violating the First Amendment.

And this isn’t about an indictment of James Comey, but about an indictment of Donald Trump for his abuse of power and politicization of the Justice Department.