Tish the Tartuffe and Little Jimmy Comey

I should have seen it coming, but I gagged anyway.

In announcing that a grand jury in the U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Virginia had just indicted New York State Attorney General Letitia James on one count of bank fraud and one count of making a false statement to a lending institution, Reuters news agency claimed in its lead sentence that the indictment was the result of “the administration seeking to use government power against those who have pursued investigations into him or publicly resisted his agenda.”

How’s that for unbiased journalism?

No, the story wasn’t on Reuter’s editorial or opinion page. It was published as a straight news story, supposedly devoid of the personal political leanings of its three co-authors. Not only that, but the article included a picture of an angelic-looking James gazing heavenward with her hands seemingly folded in prayer.

Yeah, I’m not buying that either.

Let Letitia James whine, complain, and posture all she wants. She ran for office on a promise to get Donald Trump, inheriting an office in which her predecessors had already taken more than 200 legal actions against President Trump and his administration. When she finally found something that stuck – charges that Mr. Trump had allegedly inflated the value of some of his real estate holdings in order to receive more favorable terms on a bank loan – James left herself wide open for payback.

In the two-count indictment, Ms. James is accused of claiming that a house she was purchasing in Norfolk, Virginia would be either her primary or secondary residence when, in fact, she has never lived there and has used the home exclusively as a rental investment property. Mortgage rates for investment properties are traditionally higher than those for residential homes, hence the fraud allegations against James.

“No one is above the law,” said U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan. “The charges as alleged in this case represent intentional, criminal acts and tremendous breaches of the public’s trust. The facts and the law in this case are clear, and we will continue following them to ensure that justice is served.”

If convicted, James faces up to 30 years in prison on each count.

Before taking office as New York State’s top law enforcement officer, James told reporters, “We're going to continue to look at his [Trump’s] business transactions and his holdings here in the state of New York.” In other words, Ms. James was planning to target an individual in a desperate attempt to find a possible crime. Ironically and hypocritically, she now accuses President Trump of the very thing she publicly admitted doing during her 2018 campaign.

“This is nothing more than a continuation of the president’s desperate weaponization of our justice system,” James said in a statement. “These charges are baseless, and the president’s own public statements make clear that his only goal is political retribution at any cost,” she added.

Given her own personal vendetta against President Trump, how she said those words with a straight face is beyond me.

The same goes for former FBI director James Comey, who was indicted last week on charges on lying to Congress and obstructing a congressional investigation… and official transcripts that have been made public provide irrefutable truth that that’s exactly what he did. However, that still didn’t prevent Comey from pleading not guilty while singing the same off-key tune as Ms. James.

Unfortunately for Comey, it is hard to portray yourself as an innocent victim of a politically motivated hit job when you lied to a FISA court about the discredited Russian dossier in your mad dash to prevent Mr. Trump’s election in 2016 and then conspired with President Obama, Vice President Biden, CIA director John Brennan, and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to undermine the incoming and duly elected president just a month before his inauguration.

What goes around, comes around… and both Tish James and Little Jimmy Comey are finding out that when you play with matches, you risk getting burned yourself.