Transcript: Trump’s Rage at Jim Comey Backfires as Case Goes Off Rails

As Trump’s efforts to jail his enemies start looking truly buffoonish, a former federal prosecutor explains why the case targeting James Comey is already looking like a spectacular flop.

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the April 30 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

Donald Trump’s corrupt use of state power to persecute his enemies is dramatically ramping up. The Justice Department just indicted former FBI Director James Comey on laughably thin charges. And the Federal Communications Commission chief is escalating his war against ABC due to Trump’s rage at Jimmy Kimmel. These are heinous abuses of power, but we also think they’re likely to backfire on Trump in a major way. If and when they fizzle, the result will be that they don’t even energize the MAGA base for the midterms, and if anything, will likely drive votes against the GOP.

We’re digging through all this today with former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade, author of a new book, The Fix: Saving America from the Corruption of a Mob-Style Government, which is certainly an apt title given these latest developments. Barb, good to have you on.

Barbara McQuade: Thanks, Greg. Great to be here. You know, when I first came up with that title, like a year and a half ago, it felt very novel and now it feels very obvious.

Sargent: It’s perfect. You were prescient there. Well done. So let’s start with James Comey. Trump’s effort to prosecute him the first time failed. Now they’re starting again. James Comey has been indicted for an image he put on Instagram last spring showing seashells arranged to depict the numbers 86-47. Barb, can you walk us through what prosecutors are trying to do here and why it’s such a joke?

McQuade: Yeah, it’s hard to get into the head of what’s happening at DOJ right now because it’s so far afield from what I saw in my 20 years as a federal prosecutor. We saw the effort to convict James Comey of a crime in the fall fizzle. And so now here we are with this charge based on events that occurred almost a year ago. If this were really such a serious charge, you know, what on earth could explain an almost year-long delay?

I know Todd Blanche and Kash Patel said that they’ve been investigating the case, but my gosh, they had the post in May and they interviewed Comey the next day. I don’t know what more is necessary. Go out to sea and find the actual seashells? I don’t think so.

And so, this statute is something I’ve charged. Threatening to kill a president is a serious crime and people do get charged with it from time to time. The essence of the charge is it has to be what’s called a true threat. It’s not enough to say, I don’t like the president or even to say the president should die. You have to express a true threat.

And what the court has said, as recently as 2023 in a case called Countermann v. Colorado, is that a true threat is—I’m reading here from the case—”a serious expression that the speaker means to convey an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence.” That’s a high standard. And the reason it’s such a high standard is to separate what is a true threat from mere political speech.

Of course, in this country, we give a lot of protection under our First Amendment to free speech. And so to make sure that it isn’t just, you said something mean about the president, you said something about your wishes about the president—those are not enough. It has to be a threat to commit an unlawful act of violence against a target. And I just don’t think we have that here.

Sargent: So we’ve got the number 86 here, which seems to be at issue. It seems to be getting construed as a threat itself. Let’s listen to Trump talk about that for a sec. Here, a reporter asks Trump if he really thinks Comey’s shell image threatened his life. Listen.

Reporter (voiceover): Do you really think that he was endangering your life or threatening your life with that?

Donald Trump (voiceover): Well, if anybody knows anything about crime, they know 86, you know, and 86 is a mob term for kill him. You know, you ever see the movies—86 him? The mobster says to one of his wonderful associates, 86 him. That means kill him. It’s—I think of it as a mob term. I don’t know. People think of it as something having to do with disappearing. But the mob uses that term to say when they want to kill somebody, they say 86 the son of a gun.

Sargent: Barb, he can’t even bring himself to pretend to believe that’s real, right? I mean, look—so the term 86, you wrote in a piece for MS NOW about this—can you talk about the term 86 in this context and why this construal is so friggin’ ridiculous?

McQuade: Yes. So as far as I know, the term comes from the restaurant business, where to 86 means to cancel an order. I know Merriam-Webster says it can mean to remove. I suppose Donald Trump thinks it’s used by the mafia—I guess he would know, I don’t—to mean to kill somebody. But I think it’s a vague term. It’s capable of numerous interpretations.

It could mean impeach the president. It could mean remove him from office. It could mean don’t........

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