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“You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.”
Nearly a decade ago, Donald Trump read this line from a poem known as “The Snake” to rallygoers with fervor, using it as a metaphor about immigration and unsecured borders.
In fact, the poem is an allegory of the dangers of gullibility in the face of an obvious threat. In the tale, a kindly woman takes a frozen, half-dead venomous snake into her home to resuscitate it, ignoring the animal’s inherent nature to strike her dead with a single bite once restored to full strength.
His once favored poem is now more prescient than ever: Trump told Americans for years he would go after his political enemies as soon as he was able, and, nine months into his second term, basking in the fealty of the loyalists he has installed at the nation’s highest law enforcement authority — the U.S. Justice Department — Trump is now that half-frozen snake all thawed out and here to remind the nation: He told you who he was before you took him in.
This reality was put on bald display Thursday after the Justice Department announced it had secured the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey on one count of making false statements and one count of obstruction of justice.
Comey — whom Trump has long sought to punish for his involvement in investigations into the president during Trump’s first term — is one of the highest-profile foes of the president that Trump has pursued. But his indictment represents just a fraction of the weaponization that has been unfolding at the Justice Department, increasingly under Trump’s direct bidding, for months.
Only six days ago, Trump posted a message on Truth Social demanding that Attorney General Pam Bondi secure indictments against his political enemies. He named Comey specifically, as well as New York State Attorney General Letitia James, who successfully prosecuted Trump for falsifying business records, and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who led an impeachment inquiry against Trump in his first term.
Mark Zaid, a national security lawyer whose security clearance was yanked by the administration along with 37 other former and current government officials, told HuffPost that Comey’s indictment “further undermines the norms we know as the rule of law with the obvious politicization and weaponization of the very institution we expect to protect all of us.”
“But no one should be surprised that the Trump Administration is pursuing political vengeance against his perceived enemies. They telegraphed their intentions from the outset, and it is time for America to wake up,” Zaid said Friday.
Trump has dismantled and remade the DOJ in order to have his way. Comey was only indicted in the Eastern District of Virginia after the original federal prosecutor in that district, Erik Siebert, stepped down and was replaced by Lindsey Halligan. Siebert, whom Trump had nominated to the position in May, had reportedly been forced out because he was unable to find credible evidence to charge the former FBI director or the New York attorney general.
Like Bondi, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, and Emil Bove, who is now a lifetime-appointed judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd U.S. Circuit, Halligan, a former beauty pageant contestant, used to be one of Trump’s personal lawyers. (She represented Trump when he was charged in Florida with illegal retention of classified documents.)
Halligan has zero experience prosecuting criminal cases. She is, however, experienced on how to follow orders from the administration: Before being elevated to interim U.S. attorney in Virginia’s Eastern District — literally known as the “rocket docket” since it is one of the busiest courts in the nation — she was tasked with ridding the Smithsonian Institution of “improper ideology” that failed to align with Trump’s vision of American history.
“I saw how we were pushed in the first Trump administration to do things that crossed ethical lines,” said a former trial attorney for the Justice Department’s civil division who spoke anonymously with HuffPost Friday out of fear of retribution.
The attorney handled sensitive political cases during the first Trump administration and President Joe Biden’s administration, and resigned just before Trump was inaugurated again.
“After watching everything that happened with Jan. 6, I knew there was no way I could go in and, in good conscience, defend Trump,” they said. “Not because of my policy positions, but in my office, you had to be willing to sign up and defend the president’s policies. I knew it would be a lawless era. But I didn’t anticipate anything like this.”
Trump’s weaponization of the Justice Department has been moving full steam ahead since January, when he formally announced that he would pardon or commute Jan. 6 rioters. That choice ultimately unwound years of work put in by the Justice Department to secure convictions, including for those charged with the most serious crimes to emerge from the Jan. 6 insurrection: seditious conspiracy against the United States.
“I don’t think Americans are as informed as they should be about how dangerous this is.”
– Former DOJ civil attorney
Trump has placed the blame for Jan. 6 on Democrats, suggesting it was former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) who should be prosecuted for security failures at the Capitol. A special Republican-led committee investigating Trump’s version of Jan. 6 was formed just weeks ago.
And last month, the Office of Special Counsel — led by former right-wing podcaster and 2020 election denier Paul Ingrassia after Trump fired OSC special counsel Hampton Dellinger — confirmed that it was investigating former special counsel Jack Smith, who oversaw Trump’s criminal prosecutions, for alleged violations of the 1939 Hatch Act. (The law — which Trump and administration officials have seemingly run roughshod over — says federal workers can’t engage in partisan activities when operating in their official capacity.)
Lawyers and FBI agents who worked Jan. 6 cases were fired en masse, and attorneys who worked on prosecutions against Trump were purged or demoted. Trump’s former personal lawyer Alina Habba plowed ahead with the trumped-up prosecution of Rep. LaMonica McIver and Newark Mayor Ras Baraka for alleged assault of a federal agent at an ICE facility in Newark this summer. (Charges against Baraka were dropped, and he is now suing; meanwhile, discovery hasn’t even begun in McIver’s case, four months after the initial charge.)
Ed Martin, a Jan. 6 conspiracy theorist Trump put in charge of the Justice Department’s so-called “Weaponization Working Group” has been lurking outside of Letitia James’ Brooklyn townhouse, sending her letters telling her to resign as the president publicly accuses her of mortgage fraud. The DOJ abruptly closed a Biden-era probe of Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, for allegedly accepting $50,000 from FBI agents posing as business executives. The FBI, under the leadership of unabashed Trump ally Kash Patel, raided the home and office of John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser who later became an outspoken critic of the president, as he is investigated for retention of classified materials.
The former DOJ civil attorney described the overlap between politics and prosecution as “completely unheard of in recent decades and really devastating” to the work of department staff, as well as to morale.
When defending the president against a civil case, the attorney said, there were “really clear boundaries” for what trial attorneys could or could not do in terms of their communications with the White House.
“Trial attorneys weren’t allowed to have direct communication with the White House absent a lot of safeguards or with a lot of protocols put in place. Even feedback on briefs – there were all kinds of firewalls put up,” they said. “There might have been some erosion of those boundaries then [under the first Trump administration], but they are completely gone now.”
Friends and colleagues still at the department tell the former trial lawyer that they are “devastated” to see the Justice Department used in such a politically motivated and “inappropriate” way, they said.
“Morale is as low as I can imagine it being,” they said. “That’s by design, not by accident.”
Even friends of theirs who don’t work in “the most politically sensitive areas,” like in the department’s antitrust division or environmental division, have expressed profound feelings of disrespect and frustration.
“The personnel actions happening now make them feel like they are the enemy, like they are disrespected by management, like the things being done are retributive rather than trying to foster and appreciate a workforce, and that the work they are doing is going to be twisted and politicized,” they said.
The Comey indictment is “completely unfathomable,” they added.
“I don’t think Americans are as informed as they should be about how dangerous this is,” they said.
While celebrating Comey’s indictment, Trump has been raging at the judge randomly assigned to the case simply because Biden appointed them to the bench. Comey, Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Friday, is “off to a very good start” because “he was just assigned a Crooked Joe Biden appointed judge.”
Calling Comey a “dirty cop,” Trump also said a “very big price must be paid” by the former FBI director.
The former civil trial attorney who spoke to HuffPost said Trump’s taste for retribution left them with many questions about what comes next.
“I don’t know how we rebuild this level of devastation at the Justice Department. It’s such an important institution. It’s just hard for me to see how, post-Trump presidency, how we come back from the damage he’s done,” they said. “I hope Americans are paying attention to what surely seems to be a purely vindictive prosecution of Comey — if he can do this here, this early into the administration, there’s no telling who’s going to be next.”
After Comey was indicted on Thursday, Trump suggested his next target may be another one of his vocal critics: former CIA director John Brennan.
CORRECTION: This article has been amended to reflect that Virginia is within the jurisdiction of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.