The Center for the Political Future hosted a panel discussion with legal experts titled \u201cThe Courts and the Future of Democracy\u201d on September 29. <\/p>\n
Moderated by Bob Shrum, Director of the Center for the Political Future at USC Dornsife, the discussion quickly centered on the Justice Department\u2019s indictment of former FBI Director James Comey.<\/p>\n
On September 25, the Justice Department<\/a> charged Comey with making false statements to Congress and obstructing a congressional proceeding related to his 2020 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. <\/p>\n The indictment alleges that Comey misled senators about authorizing an FBI official to share internal information with the press during the bureau\u2019s 2017 handling of the \u201cRussiagate\u201d investigation. Prosecutors claim that by denying he permitted those disclosures, Comey obstructed congressional oversight into the leaks of sensitive investigative material. <\/p>\n CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin dismissed the case as \u201cthe kind of document that looks like it was written by a first-year law student\u201d and told the audience flatly, \u201cthis case will never go to trial.\u201d<\/p>\n He described the prosecution as \u201cmalicious and vindictive,\u201d noting that career DOJ prosecutors had refused to pursue charges they considered unsupported by evidence. <\/p>\n To illustrate these tactics, Toobin cited the dismissal of Marie Comey from a federal post, arguing that the Trump administration is \u201coperating on a North Korean principle that an entire family should be punished for one person.\u201d <\/p>\n USC Gould School of Law Dean Franita Tolson argued that the case\u2019s significance lay less in its legal prospects than in its political symbolism.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s not convicted of anything and nobody believes this,\u201d she said, describing the indictment as a way for the president to assert \u201cabsolute authority over the Department of Justice.\u201d <\/p>\n She warned that once the case fades from the headlines, Americans may slip into a \u201cfalse sense of security\u201d about the resilience of democratic institutions.<\/p>\n Emory University law professor Alexander \u201cSasha\u201d Volokh situated the controversy within the broader context of executive power.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we are seeing is typical of the Trump administration,\u201d he said, portraying the indictment as \u201cmore like press releases aimed at the modern movement.\u201d <\/p>\n In his view, the episode was less about Comey than about a president testing whether he could exercise absolute control over the executive branch.<\/p>\n Shrum then asked whether the judiciary could function as a check in such a moment. Tolson, who described herself as a historian of Reconstruction, was skeptical. <\/p>\n