‘The Gang That Couldn’t Indict Straight’: Wall Street Journal Roasts Trump Over Dismissed ‘Revenge Tour’ Cases

AP Photo/Evan Vucci

The Wall Street Journal mocked President Donald Trump and his team in an editorial on Tuesday after the cases his Department of Justice brought against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James were thrown out the day before.

Under the headline “The Gang That Couldn’t Indict Straight,” the Journal observed that “President Trump’s lawfare revenge tour has gone bust,” after a judge ruled that “Lindsey Halligan wasn’t properly appointed as federal prosecutor and had no authority to indict.”

“In its rush for retribution, the Trump Administration cut corners,” it added before concluding:

The vacancy law is designed for a temporary fill-in, not Senate circumvention. Ms. Halligan “has been unlawfully serving,” the judge concludes, and her efforts on indicting Mr. Comey and Ms. James were “unlawful exercises of executive power.” This is what happens when officials don’t follow legal procedure. They lose cases. Mr. Trump was so eager to indict his enemies, and Attorney General Pam Bondi was so quick to go along, that it all unraveled at the pull of one legal thread.

The Trump Administration could refile the charges, though the statute of limitations may have expired in Mr. Comey’s case. If Mr. Trump tries again, he might end up with cases that are two-time legal losers.

Fox News’ Andy McCarthy has also been critical of Trump’s DOJ, and especially the case against Comey.

“I still think the bottom line problem with the case is that the charge itself is incoherent. And I think they may lose on the face of the indictment,” said McCarthy on Monday. “Like, did it adequately put Comey on notice of what he was being accused of? And I think there’s a lot of public misunderstanding about this because there are a number of things to be upset about the way that Comey ran the FBI, but those things are not really, you know, they don’t really interact with this particular indictment, which is kind of a mess.”