Last week a Grand Jury indicted former FBI Director James Comey on charges of lying to Congress and obstructing a congressional hearing. Comey, unsurprisingly, claimed innocence and insisted the charges against him were nothing more than Donald Trump taking “revenge.”

Many other Democrats have said the same: Trump is out for revenge!

It’s an old refrain. Democrats have been accusing Donald Trump of seeking revenge since he was re-elected. For example, November 6th, 2024, the day after the election, Susan Glasser wrote “Donald Trump’s Revenge” in the New Yorker. On April 7th, 2025, The New York Times ran with the headline “In Trump’s Second Term Retribution Comes in Many Forms” with the opening sentence reading “President Trump’s campaign to exact revenge against his perceived foes….” And a March 30, 2025 article in The Guardian reads, “Revenge is his number one motivation: how Trump is waging war on the media.”

In response to the FBI raid on former National Security Advisor John Bolton’s home last August, The New York Timeseditorial board wrote “ Trump gets his revenge on John Bolton. Who’s next?” The Washington Post editorial board opined“FBI raid targeting Bolton crossed a line in the Trump revenge campaign.” And, Nicholas Riccardi of the AP recently wrote “Trump ran on a promise of revenge. Now he’s making good on it.”

“Revenge” appears to be a key Democrat talking point these days.

Of course none of these Democrat “journalists” or politicians considered either the early morning raid on Mar-a-Lago or the far-fetched criminal indictments of Trump as “revenge.” Nor is the attempted assassination of Trump at Butler seen as an act of revenge. The early morning FBI raid on Roger Stone’s home, the jailing of Trump confidants Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, and the disbarring of Trump attorneys John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani aren’t called acts of revenge either.

Ironically, by labeling Trump’s actions as “revenge”, Mr. Comey unintentionally indicts himself.

“Revenge” is a very specific act. An individual seeking (or taking) revenge acts to “inflict hurt or harm on someone for an injury or wrong suffered at their hands.” No wrong, no revenge. In fact an individual can’t even consider revenge until an injury or wrong has been done to them. There is no preemptive revenge. Revenge is always reactive. First the wrong, then the revenge.

By claiming Trump seeks revenge, Comey tacitly admits that wrongs were done to Trump. And since Comey claims he is the object of “Trump’s revenge” then he must be the one who committed those particular wrongs. It’s a simple equation. Trump seeks revenge on Comey, Comey did something to deserve the revenge. First the wrong, then the revenge.

And “revenge” and “justice” are not the same thing. “Justice” is determined by law and administered by the state. Lady Justice, depicted as blind, always aims for a fair and impartial application of law, processed through established court procedures, arbitrated by neutral judges and a 12-person jury of one’s peers. 

“Revenge” on the other hand, is ruled by emotion — usually rage — and enacted by an aggrieved individual for personal reasons. There is no neutral arbiter between the “revenge” taker and the “revenge” receiver. In the application of justice, there is.

While considering the subject of “revenge,” fiction can be illustrative. In a story, the “wrong” is always unequivocal, appalling, and witnessed by the audience. This emotionally connects the audience to the “wrong.” This connection means that “revenge” is both justified and desirable. Who doesn’t want the bad guy to get his comeuppance?

For example in the 1990 Kevin Costner movie “Revenge”, a Mexican drug lord (played by Anthony Quinn) has his much younger wife (played by Madeline Stowe) raped and brutalized because she was sleeping with his much younger friend, Kevin Costner’s character. This brutalization means Costner’s character is entitled to take “revenge” for the wrong done to his lover. It also means that the audience is on his side. The complexity, and horror, of this particular “revenge” tale lies in the fact that the initial misdeed was the wife’s betrayal of her husband. However the husband’s “revenge” is wildly disproportionate to the wife’s transgression, making her lover’s revenge both acceptable and desired by an audience.

With “revenge,” wrong leads to wrong leads to wrong. The cycle of “revenge” is cruel and never ending.

So what was the initial “wrong” in this case?

When Comey said, “Let’s have a trial,” he is asking that justice supersede “revenge.” After all, the charges against him come from the Justice Department. If Trump were out for “revenge,” Comey should be looking over his shoulder for club-wielding thugs coming out of the darkness, not a notification of charges and a summons for his arrest delivered by gray-suited lawyers.

Comey will get his wish. There will be a trial. And since the bar for conviction is “beyond a reasonable doubt,” Comey may be guilty but still be acquitted. Or he may be innocent and still get convicted. Justice is imperfect. Trials don’t always deliver a verdict in line with the truth, but they are never, theoretically, acts of revenge.

This touches on a more overarching and complex issue than James Comey and the Democrats’ whining that Trump is out for “revenge.” For many years, the Left has insisted the justice system is more concerned with retribution than with justice. Since 2020, there has been a movement to defund the police, turn felonies into misdemeanors, reduce sentences, selectively prosecute certain crimes, make bail cashless, and to use social workers instead of police to deal with street crime. This attitude presumes the victim of a crime is always less important than how the perpetrator is handled by an imperfect justice system.

In this case, Mr. Comey is the perpetrator. He is already, by Democrat standards, aggrieved.

Ironically, James Comey once ran the premier law enforcement agency in the nation. His accusation that Trump is getting revenge indicts the agency he once headed. After all, if the FBI can be used as an instrument of revenge, it is not an agency that enforces law. Law enforcement officers don’t do the bidding of some mafia-like chieftain. Perhaps Mr. Comey suggesting the Justice Department and the FBI can be used as instruments of revenge tells us something about how he ran the agency.

Indicting Mr. Comey, and putting him on trial is certainly not “revenge.” A trial is a long, laborious, and expensive process that “presumes” the defendant is innocent until proven guilty. Guilt is proven by facts and determined by a jury of 12 people.

So let Mr. Comey’s wish come true: let’s have a trial and see what the facts tell us, and what a jury decides.

Andrew McCabe, former Deputy Director of the FBI who briefly served as acting director in 2017, has long been a target for controversy. He rose through the ranks during a tumultuous period in American law enforcement history. McCabe’s career disgracefully ended when he was fired by Attorney General Jeff Sessions just days before his retirement eligibility in March 2018. McCabe’s involvement in an unauthorized disclosure (leak) of sensitive information to the Wall Street Journal in October 2016 is what led to his resignation. Many argue this shines light on the institutional bias, personal conflicts of interest, and a pivotal role in what many now view as the politicized Russia collusion narrative against President Donald J. Trump. As the federal indictment swirls around James Comey, his old boss, McCabe’s name is resurfacing, raising questions about whether true accountability is around the bend.

Almost immediately after I was sentenced to 40 months in prison in the Soviet-style show trial I was put through in Washington DC, the prosecutor in my case, J. P. Cooney, announced that Andrew McCabe would face no charges—despite the fact that McCabe very clearly lied to Congress under oath. In my case, no misstatement I made to Congress in my voluntary testimony before the House Intelligence Committee hid any underlying crime. There was, as we know now, no Russian collusion or WikiLeaks collaboration—and therefore I had no motive to lie, as there was nothing to lie about. Andrew McCabe specifically lied about the leaking of classified information to embarrass President Trump.

McCabe joined the FBI in 1996, climbed to Deputy Director in 2016, overseeing major investigations into national security threats. McCabe’s leadership was overshadowed by persistent allegations of misconduct. The Justice Department’s Inspector General report in 2018 painted a damning picture, McCabe lacked candor on four separate occasions when questioned about unauthorized disclosures to the media regarding the FBI’s probe into Hillary Clinton’s emails. He was accused of misleading investigators, a violation that led to his termination and a referral for criminal charges. Ultimately, the DOJ declined to prosecute him in 2020. Numerous critics decried this as a miscarriage of justice, arguing that failing to prosecute McCabe signals a tolerance for corruption at the senior ranks of federal law enforcement. President Trump himself stated that McCabe knew all about the lies and corruption going on at the highest levels of the FBI, framing his firing as a great day for honest agents. McCabe has since reinvented himself as a CNN contributor and author, but the Inspector General (OIG) 2018 report, led by Michael Horowitz, still lingers fueling claims that his tenure exemplified a politicized FBI.

No chapter of Andrew McCabe’s legacy burns brighter with controversy than his role in the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation, launched in July 2016 to probe ties between the Trump campaign and Russian election interference. As Deputy Director, McCabe was a driving force in overseeing this explosive inquiry, which paved the way for the Mueller special counsel investigation. During 2019 press interviews promoting his memoir, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump, McCabe revealed he launched separate obstruction and counterintelligence probes into Trump after his 2017 inauguration, defending them as critical to safeguarding the Russia investigation from interference.

McCabe’s firing in 2018 came just as the Mueller probe intensified, and was seen by many as a necessary purge, with many Americans arguing it exposed the leaking, lying, and corruption at the FBI’s core. Andrew McCabe admitted, in a 2020 Senate hearing to unacceptable errors in the Russia investigation but denied a coup. The 2019 Inspector General report on the probe’s origins found no evidence of political bias, but highlighted 17 significant inaccuracies and omissions in the FISA warrant applications targeting Trump associate Carter Page, warrants McCabe’s team helped secure. McCabe’s defenders, including himself in interviews, insist the probe was driven by legitimate intelligence, such as the Steele dossier (later discredited). His actions, coupled with texts from subordinates like Peter Strzok expressing anti-Trump animus, further validate perceptions of a deep-state effort.

Andrew McCabe’s connections have faced intense scrutiny. Jill McCabe, his wife, ran unsuccessfully for Virginia state senate in 2016. During her campaign, she received nearly $467,500, over half her total funding, from the Washington Victory Fund, controlled by Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, a close Clinton ally and former DNC chairman. McAuliffe had deep links to the Clinton Foundation. Sen. Chuck Grassley probed these connections in 2017, questioning whether McCabe recused himself from Clinton related matters, a recusal the Inspector General later deemed insufficient. The 2018 IG report confirmed McCabe should have stepped aside but found no direct evidence he influenced outcomes. The optics were still viewed as toxic from afar. McCabe’s affiliations with figures like James Comey and Peter Strzok have also drawn criticism, particularly after Strzok’s private texts exposed a group of FBI insiders who appeared to see the agency as a shield against Trump. These ties exemplify how McCabe kept company with the wrong people prioritizing loyalty over ethics. While McCabe remains a media fixture at CNN, his past is resurfacing amid the Department of Justice’s September 2025 indictment of James Comey. 

Though no charges have been filed against McCabe directly, the Comey case could reveal more, potentially reigniting calls for his prosecution. Andrew McCabe’s tenure as FBI Deputy Director serves as a cautionary example of the risks of perceived overreach within institutions tasked with the power to protect our democracy. Whether it ends in vindication or further disgrace, the shadow of 2016 has undoubtedly been stirred.

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