Below, I am providing a complete copy of a letter that appeared in the Wall Street Journal's "Letters To The Editor" column on October 6, 2025. The issue discussed is still (and is always) timely.
Charles W. Mulhaney, Jr. was writing in defense of the Trump Administration's determination to try to hold James Comey criminally liable for, allegedly, lying to Congress when Comey was the Director of the FBI. Mulhaney notes that "politically motivated law enforcement" is an old (if not "venerable") tradition. When this kind of politically motivated law enforcement does occur, it is generally pursued on the basis that (as I phrase it in the title to today's blog posting): "It's wrong, but they did it first."
I have written on this topic before, and will provide a link to my earlier pronouncement right here: "An Eye For An Eye [Makes The Whole World Blind]." It seems that some believe that a justification for doing something that is admitted to be wrong can be found in the fact that the "other side" has already done it. I think that Gandhi makes a good point in his rejection of this approach.
Thinking about our current politics, we could cite this present discussion as relevant to the upcoming November 4, 2025, special election, here in the State of California, in which a politically-motivated Congressional redistricting is being sponsored by Democrats - with the head cheerleader, and promulgator, being California's Democratic Governor, Gavin Newsom. It does strike me that the "It's Wrong, But They Did It First" label does apply to the justification given for Proposition 50 - namely, that the Republicans have already done that kind of politically-motivated redistricting, in Texas, so that Democrats need to counteract the impact of what the Republicans did by doing it ourselves, here in California.
Is that a good enough justification for Proposition 50? A credible argument is being made in favor of Proposition 50, but I must say that the "they did it first" justification is not a very happy excuse for the kind of politics that is being ever more widely accepted as just business as usual in our political world.
oooOOOooo
If Trump Didn’t Break DOJ Norms, Who Did?
FDR and JFK know a thing or two about politically motivated law enforcement.
Charles W. Mulhaney, Jr.
Your editorial “The Comey-Trump Revenge Cycle” (Sept. 27) rightly notes that the indictment of James Comey doesn’t “shatter” norms at the Justice Department. Politically motivated law enforcement is an older tradition than many realize.
Recall Franklin D. Roosevelt, who used federal agencies against various opponents, perhaps most notably when he directed Justice Department prosecutor Robert Jackson, later attorney general and Supreme Court Justice, to go after Andrew Mellon, Republican Treasury secretary from 1921 to 1932. Mellon had opposed FDR’s 1933 banking bill, and Jackson tried to indict him for tax evasion. A grand jury refused to return an indictment in May 1934. (So much for the proposition that a good prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich.)
The administration then filed a civil-tax fraud complaint against Mellon, which it pursued until his death in 1937. He was exonerated of fraud, and between 1934 and 1937 donated his vast art collection to the U.S., even creating the National Gallery to display it. He treated his country better than it treated him.
The Kennedy administration’s record of rigorous independence from politics likewise suffered early and often because the attorney general was the president’s brother. JFK’s Justice Department wasn’t independent by design. Consider that in 1962, after the president jawboned steel executives not to raise prices, they did so anyway. The “politically independent” Justice Department investigated the companies on alleged antitrust grounds, served subpoenas and conducted interviews early in the morning at the executives’ homes. Then, as now, people spoke out against these “Gestapo tactics.”
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