(REUTERS)

Yet another foe of President Donald Trump was indicted on federal charges when, on Thursday afternoon, October 16, a grand jury indicted former National Security Advisor John Bolton on 18 counts pertaining to alleged mishandling of classified government documents.

The Bolton indictment follows recent U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) indictments of two other Trump foes, New York State Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey, on allegations of mortgage fraud. Attorney George Conway, a Never Trump conservative, is attacking the James and Comey indictments as "flimsy" at best.

Former U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official Miles Taylor — himself a Never Trumper who Trump called for a federal investigation of — analyzed the Bolton indictment during a Saturday morning, October 18 appearance on MSNBC's "The Weekend," emphasizing that the possible motivations of federal prosecutors are crucial in this case.

Taylor told an MSNBC panel that also included The New Yorker's Jelani Cobb and hosts Jonathan Capehart, Jackie Alemany and Eugene Daniels, "There's another question that no one is asking here. And it's a rhetorical question, and it's going to be really hard to get in the conscience of these prosecutors. But the question is this: Do those prosecutors, did they know, that if they didn't bring these charges against John Bolton, that they would all be fired?"

Taylor continued, "It's a rhetorical question, because they obviously know that. They have looked just down the street at (another) prosecutor's office, and they've seen if there are cases that aren't brought against the president's enemies, that's it — your career is over. And these aren't superheroes. These are good, honest public servants. But they are people who need a paycheck. These are people who have families. These are people who have to survive, and they are seeing that lives are ruined if they don't bring cases.

Capehart described the indictments against Bolton, James and Comey as a "rolling Saturday Night Massacre," referring to a Watergate-era scandal during Richard Nixon's presidency. And he got no argument from Taylor or Cobb.

Taylor told the panel, "That brings us to John Bolton. I'm not saying there's nothing there, but what I'm saying here is—back to the earlier argument of selective prosecution—would they have brought it under normal circumstances? Because it looks like the Justice Department sat on it for years. That it was a zombie case, and that zombie, incredibly, came back to life this year. Why? Are we to believe that it's a coincidence that Donald Trump started demanding that John Bolton go to jail, and then they resurrect this case?"

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