US president Donald Trump has signalled that his administration will launch prosecutions against more political opponents, just hours after the US Department of Justice filed criminal charges against former FBI director James Comey.
Asked about the indictment – a charging document – on Friday morning, the US president said that he had no list of who will be targeted next, but “there will be others”.
“These were corrupt, radical-left Democrats,” Mr Trump said as he prepared to travel to the Ryder Cup golf competition on Long Island, New York.
“It’s about justice. Really, it’s not revenge,” he added, repeating previous remarks that he had been the target of a political witch-hunt. “They went after me for four years.”
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The justice department filed charges against Mr Comey late on Thursday after pressure from Mr Trump to prosecute the former FBI director, who investigated contacts between the president’s 2016 campaign and Russia.
It said it had obtained a grand jury indictment in a federal court in Virginia against Mr Comey, accusing him of “serious crimes related to the disclosure of sensitive information”.
Comprising members of the public who are typically registered voters, a grand jury hears evidence presented by a prosecutor and determines whether there is enough evidence to prosecute a person and whether there is probable cause to believe a crime has been committed.
Mr Trump on Friday did not identify potential future targets, but on Thursday he named billionaire progressive donors George Soros and Reid Hoffman as members of the “radical left” that could be investigated.
Last weekend he urged attorney general Pam Bondi to take action against Democratic senator Adam Schiff and New York attorney general Letitia James.
The indictment against Mr Comey cites his testimony to a US Senate committee in 2020 as the basis for charges of lying to Congress and obstructing a congressional proceeding.
The Department of Justice’s indictment of Mr Comey marks a dramatic escalation in Mr Trump’s move against perceived adversaries. It has also deepened concerns that Mr Trump is breaching a long-standing precedent that Department of Justice prosecutions are handled at arm’s length from the White House, which has been the norm since Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal in the 1970s.
Mr Comey responded to his indictment in a video posted on social media.
“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,” he said.
“I have great confidence in the federal judicial system and I’m innocent. So let’s have a trial and keep the faith,” he added.
Mr Comey’s arraignment has been set for October 9th in a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, according to the court docket.
The charges come days after Mr Trump picked Lindsey Halligan, his former personal lawyer, to lead the US attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia, where the Department of Justice obtained the indictment against Mr Comey.
The charging document does not bear the signature of any career prosecutors at the US attorney’s office and was signed only by Ms Halligan. She is also the only justice department official listed for the case on the court docket.
“This kind of interference is a dangerous abuse of power,” Mark Warner, the Democratic senator from Virginia, said in a statement on Thursday.
FBI director Kash Patel on Friday sought to dispel accusations of political interference. “The wildly false accusations attacking this FBI for the politicization of law enforcement comes from the same bankrupt media that sold the world on Russia Gate – it’s hypocrisy on steroids,” he wrote in a post on X.
The allegations against Mr Comey centre on the former FBI director’s testimony before the Senate judiciary committee on September 30th, 2020, when he was questioned by Republican senator Ted Cruz about whether he authorised anyone at the FBI to leak information to the press.
Mr Comey said he stood by prior testimony denying he gave that authorisation. His statement conflicted with separate testimony by former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, who said Mr Comey had in effect done so.
Mr Trump fired Mr Comey as head of the FBI in 2017 as he was overseeing an inquiry into contacts between Mr Trump’s presidential campaign and Russian officials.
His dismissal led to the appointment of Robert Mueller, who had previously led the FBI, as special counsel to take over the investigation. Mr Mueller ultimately found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow, and the president condemned the inquiry as a “witch-hunt”.
– Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
