Welcome to the beat. I'm R.A. Melbert. And we are reporting as we end a week that has had some

historic highs, the pushback and victory by free speech advocates for Jimmy Kimmel, and last night's

legal low by any nonpartisan standard, the escalation of Trump's admitted plot to politicize

and pursue possibly illegal revenge prosecutions

and selective prosecutions out of the DOJ.

And so we have something that is not normal and is rare,

even if you put aside everything you've experienced in the Trump era,

the person charged with protecting Americans and enforcing the law across the

country, somewhat appointed in administrations of both parties, who ultimately, as everyone knows,

testified and spoke truth to power when he clashed with Donald Trump during the first round

of trying to politicize the DOJ and the FBI,

James Comey, the former FBI director, indicted last night after a very convoluted process,

we'll get into that, because President Trump had literally admitted that he wanted to call the

play and have this person indicted regardless of doubts and evidence problems within his own

DOJ. Komi is now speaking out when this news first broke about this within this hour last night,

about 24 hours ago. We had just gotten the indictment, just gotten that news. We now have a statement

from James Comey, which denies any wrongdoing. That indictment you see here is short in substance, in literal length, about a page and a half, and in the bottom there it is short in signatures because this highly unusual, many say, prejudicial process, lacks the most recent U.S. attorney who's been there

since Trump started this year because that person was ousted, lacks the career prosecutors

just a lone signature of someone with no prosecutorial experience installed by Donald Trump,

apparently to get an indictment that no one else in his DOJ would sign.

Now, it alleges that Comey knowingly made a materially false statement in congressional testimony and thus was trying to influence, obstruct, or impede what is Congress's power of inquiry.

Now, the indictment is so thin, and sometimes indictments are sparse, but not usually

...