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Ep 78 - Back Porch Files: The Revenge Department

  • May 29
  • 10 min read

The Trump administration has a habit of naming the opposite of what it does. It says it has restored free speech while raging against comedians, protesters, journalists, universities, and anyone else rude enough to exercise the First Amendment without first checking the president’s emotional forecast. It says it stands for law and order while treating January 6th like a misunderstood field trip with bear spray. It says it is fighting fraud and corruption while issuing pardons and favors that make the phrase “public integrity” look like it wandered into the wrong building. And now, with the Justice Department reportedly investigating E. Jean Carroll, it says it is ending the weaponization of justice.


The badge is supposed to protect the law, not polish the president’s grudges.
The badge is supposed to protect the law, not polish the president’s grudges.

That last claim may be the most revealing contradiction of all. Because if this is what “ending weaponization” looks like, then the word “ending” is doing a lot of unpaid labor. Carroll is not just another Trump critic. She is the woman who took Donald Trump to court and won. Twice. A jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming her, awarding her $5 million. Another jury later awarded her $83.3 million in a separate defamation case after Trump continued attacking her. Now, under Trump, the Justice Department is reportedly investigating whether Carroll committed perjury during her civil litigation. That does not automatically prove retaliation. But it absolutely sounds the alarm.


The issue reportedly centers on whether Carroll lied in a deposition about outside financial support for her legal case, after it later became public that some expenses were backed by a nonprofit connected to LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. Perjury is serious. Depositions matter. Nobody should get a free pass for lying under oath, no matter how politically sympathetic they may be. But context matters too. And the context here is impossible to ignore: the president’s Justice Department is investigating a woman who humiliated him in court, cost him millions, and became a living reminder that Donald Trump can be held accountable by ordinary legal process.


That is why this story belongs in a larger conversation about weaponized justice. Not because every Trump enemy is automatically innocent. Not because every investigation of a Democrat, critic, or accuser is illegitimate. But because equal justice depends not only on what the law says, but how the law is aimed. Who gets scrutinized? Who gets ignored? Who gets the benefit of the doubt? Who gets the microscope? And why do so many people now facing federal scrutiny seem to come from the same corner of Trump’s grievance museum?


Weaponization does not mean a powerful person got investigated. Sometimes powerful people commit crimes. Sometimes public officials lie. Sometimes prosecutors are right to ask hard questions. Weaponization happens when legal power is selectively aimed at critics, rivals, accusers, investigators, prosecutors, defectors, or inconvenient people in a way that looks less like neutral law enforcement and more like punishment. It happens when the question stops being, “Was there a crime here?” and starts sounding more like, “Can we find something on this person?”


That distinction matters because the federal government has an enormous microscope if it chooses to use it. Most people have some messy corner of their paper trail: mortgage forms, tax filings, old emails, social media posts, depositions, work records, loan documents, financial disclosures, or statements made years ago under stressful conditions. That does not make everyone a criminal. It means the government has terrifying power when it decides to look hard enough, selectively enough, and publicly enough.


That is what makes the Carroll investigation so chilling. Even if no charges are ever filed, the headline itself does work. “DOJ investigates E. Jean Carroll.” That phrase gives Trump’s allies a new talking point. It gives right-wing media another shiny object. It lets people who never accepted the jury verdicts pretend the real story was Carroll all along. The process can become the punishment. The cloud can do damage before anyone ever sees a courtroom.


And Carroll is not alone in the pattern. Letitia James, the New York attorney general who brought the civil fraud case against Trump and his business, later faced federal mortgage-related charges under Trump’s Justice Department. Again, mortgage fraud can be real. False statements to financial institutions can be real. Public officials do not get immunity because they once prosecuted Donald Trump. But James is not a random name on a loan document. She is the attorney general who struck at the heart of the Trump business myth: the inflated empire, the golden brand, the carefully polished story that Donald Trump was always the smartest and richest man in the room.


Trump publicly attacked James for years. He portrayed her as corrupt, political, and illegitimate. He reportedly called for her to be prosecuted, arrested, and punished. Then he returned to power, and his Justice Department pursued her. The original case ran into legal trouble. A grand jury reportedly declined to reindict her after an earlier dismissal. That does not settle every factual question. But it does raise the obvious one: was the government chasing a crime, or chasing a person?


James Comey belongs in this conversation for a different reason. He represents one of Trump’s oldest grievances: the FBI, the Russia investigation, and the “deep state” story Trump has been selling since his first term. Comey is no liberal folk hero. Many Democrats have their own long list of grievances against him, particularly over his handling of the Clinton email investigation in 2016. But the issue here is not whether Comey is admirable. The issue is whether a longtime Trump enemy is being subjected to strained legal theories because he has been sitting on the revenge shelf for years.


The reported case involving Comey and the “86 47” seashell post is almost absurd on its face, which does not make it harmless. Threats against a president are serious. Political violence is serious. But the law must distinguish between true threats and ambiguous political speech. When a cryptic post made of seashells becomes the foundation for a federal threat theory against one of Trump’s most hated former officials, it is fair to ask whether the Justice Department is protecting the president or servicing his grudges.


Adam Schiff adds another chapter. Schiff was one of the leading figures in Trump’s first impeachment, helping make the case that Trump abused presidential power by pressuring Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden while military aid was held up. To Trumpworld, Schiff became more than a congressional adversary. He became a symbol of oversight itself, and Trump has spent years trying to recast lawful oversight as treason, corruption, or coup-making.


So when Schiff faces mortgage-fraud scrutiny tied to referrals from a Trump-appointed housing official, the story does not float in a vacuum. Mortgage rules matter. Occupancy representations matter. Fraud can be real. But scrutiny of Schiff sits beside a broader cluster of mortgage-related allegations involving Trump adversaries. That is where the concern sharpens. One case may be a case. Multiple cases involving prominent Trump critics start to look like a method.


That method is especially dangerous because it looks bureaucratic. It does not always arrive as a dramatic indictment. Sometimes it starts as a referral, a record review, a question about old paperwork, or a federal official suddenly taking a very lively interest in the forms signed by the president’s enemies. The boringness is part of the camouflage. Nobody storms a democracy with a mortgage form, but a mortgage form in the wrong hands can still become a weapon.


John Bolton complicates the picture, which is exactly why he belongs in it. Bolton is not a sympathetic figure for much of the left. He is a hawkish conservative who served as Trump’s national security adviser before becoming a critic and writing a damaging book about Trump’s conduct in office. The allegations involving Bolton and national defense information are serious. Classified information matters. National security is not a punchline. But the question remains whether the law is being applied evenly, or whether a former insider who embarrassed Trump is receiving the deluxe microscope treatment.


That is the deeper concern. In Trump’s world, insiders who turn against him are not just critics. They are traitors to the court. They saw the king without the crown and told the village. If those people learn that every note, email, draft, and memory from their government service may be combed through by people searching for a charge, fewer insiders will speak. Fewer will warn. Fewer will testify. That is how fear does its work before the prison doors ever close.


Then there is Kilmar Abrego García, whose case is different because the concern about retaliation reportedly crossed from political criticism into judicial finding. A judge reportedly found vindictive prosecution after the government brought a human-smuggling case tied to an older incident following Abrego García’s successful challenge to his wrongful deportation. Vindictive prosecution is not a cable-news insult. It is a legal concept: the government prosecuting someone in retaliation for exercising a legal right.


That case matters because it shows the stakes beyond famous people with platforms. Carroll, James, Comey, Schiff, and Bolton are public figures. They have lawyers, supporters, press attention, and institutional memory attached to their names. Abrego García reminds us that retaliatory state power often lands first and hardest on people with fewer defenses: immigrants, detainees, protesters, poor people, and anyone whose name the public may not learn until the government makes an example of them.


Taken together, these stories do not prove that every allegation is false or every investigation is illegitimate. They do not need to. The pattern is not that every case is identical. The pattern is directional. The government’s legal power keeps moving toward people who sued Trump, prosecuted Trump, investigated Trump, impeached Trump, criticized Trump, exposed Trump, embarrassed Trump, or refused to bow. Different tools. Same direction.


That is why the administration’s “anti-weaponization” language is so dangerous. It takes a real concern and turns it into a partisan permission slip. Government power can be abused. Prosecutors can overreach. Law enforcement can be politicized. Progressives know that, often better than the people now pretending they discovered civil liberties the moment Donald Trump faced accountability. But Trump’s version of anti-weaponization is not about protecting the vulnerable from state power. It is about reclassifying accountability against Trump as abuse, and retaliation by Trump as justice.


When the law looks at Trump, it is weaponization. When the law looks at Trump’s enemies, it is accountability. When Trump’s business is investigated, it is a witch hunt. When Letitia James’ mortgage paperwork is investigated, it is law and order. When Trump is impeached, it is a coup. When Adam Schiff is scrutinized, they are just asking questions. When Trump is accused, the system is corrupt. When E. Jean Carroll is investigated, suddenly everyone is very concerned about deposition accuracy.


This is not principle. It is moral plumbing installed backward.


The danger is not limited to the people named in the headlines. The danger is the message those headlines send to everyone else. Imagine the whistleblower deciding whether to report misconduct. The journalist deciding whether to publish. The prosecutor deciding whether to bring a case. The witness deciding whether to testify. The woman deciding whether to accuse a powerful man. The immigrant deciding whether to challenge the government in court. Each one now has to wonder whether accountability will be met with retaliation.


That is how chilling effects work. They do not require every critic to be prosecuted. They only require enough examples. Enough headlines. Enough legal bills. Enough subpoenas. Enough ruined sleep. Enough people watching someone else get dragged through the machinery and deciding, quietly and understandably, that maybe they do not want to be next. Fear does not always announce itself with sirens. Sometimes it arrives as hesitation.


The Justice Department is supposed to represent the United States, not the president’s hurt feelings. It is supposed to pursue crimes, not grudges. It is supposed to protect the rule of law, not the ego of the man sitting behind the Resolute Desk. It is supposed to be independent enough to investigate the president’s friends when necessary and ignore the president’s enemies when the evidence is not there.


Nobody is above the law. But the law is also not below the president. It does not sit at his feet waiting for instructions. It does not fetch. It does not heel. It does not turn private humiliation into public prosecution because the boss has a list and a Sharpie. At least, it is not supposed to.


That is the question hanging over all of this. Are we watching a Justice Department enforcing the law, or are we watching a government learning how to keep score? Because once justice has an enemies list, it is not justice anymore. It is power dressed in a robe, carrying a badge, and pretending the costume makes it holy.


The Trump administration says it is ending weaponized justice. But if the same system keeps finding legal theories against the same category of people, the people who beat Trump, investigated Trump, prosecuted Trump, embarrassed Trump, or refused to bow, then we are not looking at coincidence anymore. We are looking at a warning. A government that can aim justice at enemies can aim it anywhere. And once that becomes normal, the rest of us are not watching from the audience. We are waiting in line.



SOURCES


DOJ investigation into E. Jean Carroll perjury allegations - https://apnews.com/article/ec802c40674fabeefab4dd8ed51aa4b6

Background on Reid Hoffman’s financial support connected to E. Jean Carroll’s legal case - https://www.forbes.com/sites/anafaguy/2023/05/10/what-was-reid-hoffmans-role-in-funding-e-jean-carrolls-case/

DOJ announcement of Letitia James indictment on bank fraud and false statement charges - https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/pr/new-york-state-attorney-general-indicted

Reuters report on judge blocking DOJ subpoenas tied to Letitia James cases - https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-judge-blocks-doj-probe-ny-ag-james-trump-nra-lawsuits-2026-01-30/

Reuters report on Comey trial date and charges tied to alleged “86 47” threat - https://www.reuters.com/world/trial-ex-fbi-chief-comey-over-alleged-seashell-threat-moved-october-2026-05-26/

Washington Post report on Trump foes, including Schiff, Bolton, Brennan, and others facing scrutiny - https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/10/11/trump-schiff-bolton-cook-brennan-prosecutions/

AP report on DOJ examining handling of Schiff mortgage-fraud investigation - https://apnews.com/article/8b29a802d74b90576e0332d610ea99ce

Guardian report on Bill Pulte, FHFA mortgage-fraud referrals, and Trump critics - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/07/bill-pulte-fhfa-referral-mortgage-fraud-lisa-cook

DOJ announcement of John Bolton indictment on national defense information charges - https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-statements-regarding-indictment-former-national-security-advisor-john

PBS report on dismissal of Kilmar Abrego García human-smuggling case for vindictive prosecution - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/federal-judge-dismisses-human-smuggling-charges-against-kilmar-abrego-garcia

ABC report on federal judge dismissing Kilmar Abrego García case - https://abc7ny.com/post/federal-judge-dismisses-tennessee-criminal-case-kilmar-abrego-garcia/19151553/

NPR/WESA report explaining Abrego García case and vindictive prosecution ruling - https://www.wesa.fm/2026-05-23/tennessee-judge-dismisses-federal-human-smuggling-charges-against-kilmar-abrego-garcia

White House executive order: “Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government” - https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/ending-the-weaponization-of-the-federal-government/

Federal Register/GovInfo entry for Executive Order 14147 - https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/DCPD-202500114

Guardian report on former federal judges challenging Trump’s Anti-Weaponization Fund - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/28/federal-judges-trump-anti-weaponization-fund

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