Opinion|Trump Has Found the Attorney General of His Dreams

October was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad month for the Department of Justice.

The worst moment happened on Oct. 5, when the department made a third attempt to prosecute James Comey, the former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The first attempt, an indictment for lying to Congress, failed when a federal court dismissed the case because the prosecutor was appointed illegally. The second, an indictment for threatening the president by posting a photo online of a collection of seashells on a beach that were arranged to say “86 47,” is still pending.

Comey, however, has filed two motions to dismiss — one based on his free speech rights and the other claiming that the government has engaged in vindictive prosecution.

The case is absurd on its face. In a 1969 case, Watts v. United States, the Supreme Court held that a far more explicit threat — the defendant had said that he would resist the draft, but “if they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is L.B.J.” — was nothing more than “political hyperbole” and protected by the First Amendment.

The third attempt is, if anything, even more specious. The Department of Justice filed what is called a criminal information (not an indictment), claiming that Comey leaked classified information that ended up in The New York Times in October 2016.

This is not the first time that the Trump administration has considered bringing this charge. Trump administration prosecutors looked into this incident in 2017 and 2019 and declined to bring charges both times.