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Revenge Or Justice, That Is The Question
By A.F. Cronin
September 30, 2025
Last week a Grand Jury indicted former FBI Director James Comey on charges of lying to Congress and obstructing a congressional hearing. Comey, unsurprisingly, claimed innocence and insisted the charges against him were nothing more than Donald Trump taking “revenge.”
Many other Democrats have said the same: Trump is out for revenge!
It’s an old refrain. Democrats have been accusing Donald Trump of seeking revenge since he was re-elected. For example, November 6th, 2024, the day after the election, Susan Glasser wrote “Donald Trump’s Revenge” in the New Yorker. On April 7th, 2025, The New York Times ran with the headline “In Trump’s Second Term Retribution Comes in Many Forms” with the opening sentence reading “President Trump’s campaign to exact revenge against his perceived foes….” And a March 30, 2025 article in The Guardian reads, “Revenge is his number one motivation: how Trump is waging war on the media.”
In response to the FBI raid on former National Security Advisor John Bolton’s home last August, The New York Times editorial board wrote “ Trump gets his revenge on John Bolton. Who’s next?” The Washington Post editorial board opined “FBI raid targeting Bolton crossed a line in the Trump revenge campaign.” And, Nicholas Riccardi of the AP recently wrote “Trump ran on a promise of revenge. Now he’s making good on it.”
“Revenge” appears to be a key Democrat talking point these days.
Of course none of these Democrat “journalists” or politicians considered either the early morning raid on Mar-a-Lago or the far-fetched criminal indictments of Trump as “revenge.” Nor is the attempted assassination of Trump at Butler seen as an act of revenge. The early morning FBI raid on Roger Stone’s home, the jailing of Trump confidants Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, and the disbarring of Trump attorneys John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani aren’t called acts of revenge either.
Ironically, by labeling Trump’s actions as “revenge”, Mr. Comey unintentionally indicts himself.
“Revenge” is a very specific act. An individual seeking (or taking) revenge acts to “inflict hurt or harm on someone for an injury or wrong suffered at their hands.” No wrong, no revenge. In fact an individual can’t even consider revenge until an injury or wrong has been done to them. There is no preemptive revenge. Revenge is always reactive. First the wrong, then the revenge.
By claiming Trump seeks revenge, Comey tacitly admits that wrongs were done to Trump. And since Comey claims he is the object of “Trump’s revenge” then he must be the one who committed those particular wrongs. It’s a simple equation. Trump seeks revenge on Comey, Comey did something to deserve the revenge. First the wrong, then the revenge.
And “revenge” and “justice” are not the same thing. “Justice” is determined by law and administered by the state. Lady Justice, depicted as blind, always aims for a fair and impartial application of law, processed through established court procedures, arbitrated by neutral judges and a 12-person jury of one’s peers.
“Revenge” on the other hand, is ruled by emotion — usually rage — and enacted by an aggrieved individual for personal reasons. There is no neutral arbiter between the “revenge” taker and the “revenge” receiver. In the application of justice, there is.
While considering the subject of “revenge,” fiction can be illustrative. In a story, the “wrong” is always unequivocal, appalling, and witnessed by the audience. This emotionally connects the audience to the “wrong.” This connection means that “revenge” is both justified and desirable. Who doesn’t want the bad guy to get his comeuppance?
For example in the 1990 Kevin Costner movie “Revenge”, a Mexican drug lord (played by Anthony Quinn) has his much younger wife (played by Madeline Stowe) raped and brutalized because she was sleeping with his much younger friend, Kevin Costner’s character. This brutalization means Costner’s character is entitled to take “revenge” for the wrong done to his lover. It also means that the audience is on his side. The complexity, and horror, of this particular “revenge” tale lies in the fact that the initial misdeed was the wife’s betrayal of her husband. However the husband’s “revenge” is wildly disproportionate to the wife’s transgression, making her lover’s revenge both acceptable and desired by an audience.
With “revenge,” wrong leads to wrong leads to wrong. The cycle of “revenge” is cruel and never ending.
So what was the initial “wrong” in this case?
When Comey said, “Let’s have a trial,” he is asking that justice supersede “revenge.” After all, the charges against him come from the Justice Department. If Trump were out for “revenge,” Comey should be looking over his shoulder for club-wielding thugs coming out of the darkness, not a notification of charges and a summons for his arrest delivered by gray-suited lawyers.
Comey will get his wish. There will be a trial. And since the bar for conviction is “beyond a reasonable doubt,” Comey may be guilty but still be acquitted. Or he may be innocent and still get convicted. Justice is imperfect. Trials don’t always deliver a verdict in line with the truth, but they are never, theoretically, acts of revenge.
This touches on a more overarching and complex issue than James Comey and the Democrats’ whining that Trump is out for “revenge.” For many years, the Left has insisted the justice system is more concerned with retribution than with justice. Since 2020, there has been a movement to defund the police, turn felonies into misdemeanors, reduce sentences, selectively prosecute certain crimes, make bail cashless, and to use social workers instead of police to deal with street crime. This attitude presumes the victim of a crime is always less important than how the perpetrator is handled by an imperfect justice system.
In this case, Mr. Comey is the perpetrator. He is already, by Democrat standards, aggrieved.
Ironically, James Comey once ran the premier law enforcement agency in the nation. His accusation that Trump is getting revenge indicts the agency he once headed. After all, if the FBI can be used as an instrument of revenge, it is not an agency that enforces law. Law enforcement officers don’t do the bidding of some mafia-like chieftain. Perhaps Mr. Comey suggesting the Justice Department and the FBI can be used as instruments of revenge tells us something about how he ran the agency.
Indicting Mr. Comey, and putting him on trial is certainly not “revenge.” A trial is a long, laborious, and expensive process that “presumes” the defendant is innocent until proven guilty. Guilt is proven by facts and determined by a jury of 12 people.
So let Mr. Comey’s wish come true: let’s have a trial and see what the facts tell us, and what a jury decides.
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From American Thinker
Link:
https://www.americanthinker.com/arti..._question.html
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