When Comey, a lifelong Republican, went public with his concerns and criticisms about Trump, the president came to see the ousted FBI chief as one of his most important enemies, and as far back as April 2018, he started demanding that Comey be prosecuted for crimes that Trump struggled to identify.

It took seven years, but the president finally managed to orchestrate the results he’s long sought. MSNBC reported:

A federal grand jury in Virginia on Thursday formally charged former FBI Director James Comey with lying to Congress and obstruction of a congressional proceeding, days after President Donald Trump forced out the U.S. attorney who had opposed bringing the case and publicly urged his attorney general to prosecute it.

.....MSNBC’s Ken Dilanian reported that within the Justice Department, many insiders believe this is “among the worst abuses” in the history of the institution. Describing the circumstances as “shocking,” Dilanian added, “It’s hard to overstate how a big a moment this is.”

Indeed, among the most striking things about the Comey indictment is that it is plainly what it appears to be. There’s barely a pretense of propriety. A failing, desperate and unpopular president wanted a critic to be charged, without regard for merit; he publicly demanded the indictment; and he found officials who were willing to feed his appetite for revenge......

Alan Rozenshtein, a former department official who now teaches at the University of Minnesota Law School, told The New York Times, “What we are seeing is the almost wholesale collapse of the Justice Department as an organization based on the rule of law.”

As Trump brags about his handiwork, indifferent to appearances, there is no reason to believe that Comey will be the last to suffer this fate.