Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg Jr. during a press conference on April 4, 2023, in New York City.

On Sept. 25, former FBI Director James Comey was indicted for allegedly lying to Congress and obstructing lawmakers. President Donald Trump has said that others are next, which has done anything but quell the accusations that this is all politically motivated.

Such a decision should come as a shock, but because of the increased lawfare waged by our politicians and Trump's own nature, I doubt any are really surprised. But this is anything but normal.

Trump's decision to prosecute Comey is likely retribution for both his investigation into Trump and Trump's own felony conviction in 2024 in New York at the hands of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Still, the cycle of lawfare is a horrible new chapter in American politics and should be de-escalated. There is no end in sight.

James Comey's indictment is about him, not the alleged crime

Although Comey’s indictment has nothing to do with his involvement in the Russian collusion investigation against Trump, I find it hard to believe that he would be prosecuted had he not been involved in those attacks against Trump.

Comey is charged with making false statements to Congress. In short, he is accused of lying when he told Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, while under oath, that he stood by previous testimony that he never authorized a leak to news outlets on the Trump investigation. That testimony is backed up by a Justice Department report that found Deputy FBI Director Andy McCabe was the one who authorized the leak and informed Comey afterward.

Comey's second charge, obstruction, is tied to the first, in that he supposedly obstructed the congressional proceeding through his alleged false statements.

Even many conservative legal experts are skeptical of the indictment.

In fact, National Review’s Andrew McCarthy wrote, “We must resort to reporting about what’s in the indictment, rather than just reading the indictment itself, because the charge is so poorly drafted that it’s not entirely clear what Comey is alleged to have lied about.”

Putting the legitimacy of Comey’s actions as FBI director aside, because it doesn’t really matter to my point, I find it rather hard to believe that such a mundane case would be brought against anyone other than one of Trump's long-standing political opponents.

The conservative case that Trump was targeted

If Trump’s genuine priority were ensuring that the persecution of conservatives through weaponized government stop, wouldn’t his utmost priority be dismantling the tools through which his enemies can do that?

Instead, the priority of the Trump administration is retribution for the unfair treatment he believes he has gone through. He could not care less about everyone else.

This isn’t to say that none of Trump’s complaints with the ways in which Democrats and their allies went after him are justified; I actually agree with him on a fair number of abuses of power from Democrats. Namely, I was a vocal critic of Bragg’s decision to prosecute Trump over hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election.

In fact, the Comey indictment is more or less a mirror image of the one that the Manhattan district attorney brought against Trump, in the sense that in both cases, prosecutors have chosen their defendant and settled on a charge after the fact.

Trump's actions only continue the cycle of lawfare

Though many conservatives warned Democrats and their allies at the time against it, Bragg certainly did not listen and decided to string together a case against Trump that stretched the fabric of the law.

For those who don’t remember, Trump was charged with falsifying business records in New York in 2023. That crime could be treated as a misdemeanor. However, in alleging that those falsifications were to conceal another crime ‒ federal elections law violations ‒ Bragg was able to elevate the charges to felonies.

The problem was that Trump was never convicted of federal election crimes. Both the Department of Justice and the Federal Election Commission had declined to prosecute Trump over this matter, making it even clearer that Bragg was stretching the law in order to target Trump.

Trump has now taken it one step further by using the power of the federal government to pursue his political opponents, a key escalation over Bragg's independent actions as a district attorney. The fact that the prosecution of Comey comes from Trump's Department of Justice naturally makes it worse.

While Bragg's alliances were clearly with Democrats, his role as district attorney is at least removed from the president's direct influence. Trump is unapologetically using his DOJ to take revenge on his enemies.

We warned Democrats what would come next

Although Bragg’s arguments were enough to convince a favorable New York jury, they were not enough to overwhelmingly convince the public. A sizable 43% of Americans thought the prosecution was brought to help then-President Joe Biden.

I, alongside many others, warned Democrats at the time that the lawfare their allies engaged in against Trump would come back to bite them, and now it has.

I won’t pretend to know whether or not the president would have targeted the former FBI director anyway had he himself not been the subject of an indictment, but I know for a fact it didn’t help. In reality, Comey’s fate was probably settled as soon as he chose to investigate Trump’s campaign during his first term, but Bragg's actions have given Trump even more political cover for his pursuit of Comey.

Now, Trump's attacks only serve to continue the worsening cycle of lawfare that erodes America's view of the Justice Department. The continued escalation of weaponized prosecution against your political enemies will quickly backfire on everyone involved.

None of this should be misconstrued to argue against prosecuting presidents or any other politically powerful people. However, if you do, you should make sure you have them dead to rights. Anything short of that is unlikely to have the lasting impact that you hope it will.

Dace Potas is an opinion columnist for USA TODAY and a graduate of DePaul University with a degree in political science.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Lawfare is shattering our justice system. Trump's Comey indictment is latest strike. | Opinion

Reporting by Dace Potas, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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