Using Justice for Vengeance
Terry H. Schwadron
Aug. 7, 2025
OK, we have accepted the idea that the ever-petulant, ever-retaliatory Donald Trump wants to strike at those who left him with an injurious image etched in his brain that they were out to block him politically, legally, or in his presidential candidacies.
Without condoning it, we expect that he will use every tool in the book to do so, legal or not. He cajoles, extorts, pressures, and now, as president, uses the agencies of government to do his dirty work against perceived enemies. We also see that in doing so, he steamrollers over law, tradition, protocol and plain human decency.
Still, if he is going to use the Justice Department to go after his predecessors for “crimes” that run to “treason,” we would expect that he’s got something more than a toady’s interpretation of a single meeting or a word in a document to back it up.
That brings us to this week’s announcement that Attorney General Pam Bondi is empaneling a grand jury to look once again into Team Trump’s beliefs that someone in U.S. intelligence, the FBI, Homeland Security or the Barack Obama White House overstepped a legal line in launching any investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, including suggestions that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to help Trump defeat Hillary Clinton — something Putin later said aloud at a press conference with Trump in Finland.
The grand jury she wants will have an open-ended investigation ahead, with no specific targets identified, and, importantly, no crime identified. Rather, it seems custom-built for mudslinging rather than any understandable crime-stopping.
Just for comparison, the Jeffrey Epstein files are all in the hands of the same Justice Department, which clearly has not proceeded with more prosecutions, and is earning wrath of MAGA supporters for keeping the information in them from getting out.
Indeed, this seems well-trod ground with multiple investigations of the Russia-interference investigator. An internal review found no serious issues, the two year-investigation by Special Council Robert Mullet, which tracked Russian social media and other Russian interference attempts that included contacts with the Trump campaign, a Senate committee headed by Sen. Mario Rubio found extensive Russian interference in the election and Special Counsel John Durham, a Republican appointee who spent three years on it, came up with three indictments about procedural matters in the probe. One pleaded guilty to changing an email, two others were acquitted. The Durham report concluded the FBI had shown confirmation bias and a “lack of analytical rigor” toward the information they received, especially information the FBI received from politically affiliated persons and entities.
Well-Trod Ground
Though there were hopes that this decade-old hurt against Trump would remain the object of speeches and the usual political epithets, Bondi has raised the stakes to an actual legal investigation, requiring us to consider the underlying case.
Trump simply cannot stomach any suggestion that he won in 2016 because Russian operatives helped to undermine Clinton. And, since too much attention is on Trump’s role in the Jeffrey Epstein matter and on economic shortfalls, this was an excellent time to accuse his predecessors of treason.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard took new looks at a meeting of FBI and intelligence leaders with Obama in 2015, a meeting all agree took place. They agree, too, that the outcome was to investigate the degree to which Russia was interfering in U.S. electoral politics. What they disagree about is whether that decision relied on information from the raw, unverified Steele dossier, much of which has been discredited. Gabbard said declassified documents showed the Obama administration “manufactured and politicized intelligence” about Russia’s interference.
As far as we know, the participants in that meeting talked about the existence of the Steele report and attached it as an addendum in a report to Obama, but said it was unverified. Their concerns about Russian interference were dependent on observed behaviors and intercepted electronic traffic, as we have come to understand.
In the Team Trump retelling, bad info from partisan sources was the basis for launching multiple investigations into Trump as the election was getting underway, hampering his candidacy.
Still, Obama himself is protected for actions in his official role by the same Supreme Court decisions that have shielded Trump, and it is not “illegal” to investigate foreign interference in an election. Indeed, any crimes being imagined have statutes of time limitation of five years. What exactly is the crime here — and why have multiple investigations missed it? OK, Trump wants to dirty the image of his foes, but bringing this into criminal law raises the ante to provide persuasive evidence not shown so far.
In referring the matter to Justice, Gabbard said she saw “treason” and “sedition” here — the overthrow of the government. The government did not get overthrown, and Trump won the election with a minority of popular vote and a majority of Electoral College votes. Calling a grand jury to prosecute unknown crimes without evidence seems an overreach that is using the Justice Department to wage a retaliatory political case.
Even if a grand jury finds error — procedural, civil or criminal — the Justice Department would still have to prosecute it in court with enough evidence to pass the reasonable doubt test.
Don’t this Justice Department, national security leadership and the White House have real problems to address right now?
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