ABC’s Good Morning America — helmed by co-host and former Clinton official George Stephanopoulos — was beside itself on Friday and enraged over Thursday’s indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, calling this a sign “norms...have been shattered” about an independent Department of Justice with “President Trump’s retribution campaign” having “reached a new and ominous level[.]”
Stephanopoulos boomed from the onset in a tease about Trump’s “retribution campaign...at [his] political enemies.” He didn’t even allow banter with fill-in co-hosts Rebecca Jarvis and Deborah Roberts before launching into a seething mini-monologue:
Reminder that Stephanopoulos and Comey teamed up for a primetime ABC special on April 15, 2018. Naturally, Stephanopoulos pressed Comey from the left.
Chief Justice correspondent Pierre Thomas solemnly followed: “The long-running battle between the two men who will soon play out in the courthouse behind me. Today, former FBI Director Comey is claiming he is the victim of a tyrant, and vowing to fight the charges.”
He too lionized Comey:
Thomas also harped on Democrats joining them in their disgust and fretted possible probes of George Soros’s unholy alliance of far-left funding operations (click “expand”):
THOMAS: Democratic lawmakers outraged.
CONGRESSMAN JAMIE RASKIN (D-MD) [on MSNBC’s Inside with Jen Psaki, 09/26/25]: Well, it’s obviously an outrage, it is a scandal. And it does feel like a major lurch into further lawlessness in the country because it was Donald Trump’s own handpicked U.S. Attorney, Mr. Siebert, originally charged with investigating James Comey, and came back with the conclusion that there was not remotely enough evidence to prosecute for any offense.
THOMAS: It comes as federal authorities target other perceived enemies of the president, including New York Attorney General Letitia James, and Senator Adam Schiff. And now we’re learning the Justice Department has targeted the group funded by billionaire Democratic donor George Soros, who the President has said should be put in jail. Sources telling ABC News top federal prosecutors from around the country received a letter this week from the Justice Department ordering them to investigate Soros’ philanthropic organization, the Open Society Foundations. It listed potential charges to consider that ranging from material support for terrorism, arson, wire fraud, and racketeering. But provided no evidence. A spokesman for Soros’s group defending their work as “peaceful and lawful,” calling DOJ’s move “politically motivated attacks on civil society meant to silence speech the administration disagrees with.” If convicted, Comey faces up to five years in prison, but it’s clear that Comey is ready to fight for his innocence and his reputation[.]
Stephanopoulos regained control and pivoted to chief legal analyst Dan Abrams: “[T]his is pretty extraordinary what we’re seeing here. The President demanded a prosecution and he got it.”
Abrams argued this was an uphill battle (click “expand”):
ABRAMS: [L]ook, what seems like the facts are pretty amazing as well. It seems this is a case about whether James Comey authorized a leak by his deputy, Andrew McCabe, about Hilary Clinton and an investigation of the Clinton Foundation. Not a leak about Donald Trump. The inspector general at the Department of Justice investigated this and determined that it was James Comey who was likely telling the truth about what happened, and not Andrew McCabe. Comey said I didn’t authorize the leak. McCabe said he authorized the leak after the fact. McCabe actually was close to getting indicted for this by the first Trump administration because the Department of Justice inspector general had determined that McCabe likely lied. So, McCabe almost gets indicted in 2019 over this. They don’t — they’re not able to get the indictment. And now Comey is going to get indicted for the same conversation, which the inspector general believed Comey, and not McCabe — and by the way, even if you believe McCabe’s account, he is not saying that Comey knew about the leak before it happened. He’s talking about it after the fact.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Except for the President’s personal attorney, every other prosecutor looked at this and said we don’t have the evidence.
ABRAMS: So, she actually had to file this herself, very unusual that the U.S. Attorney doesn’t have one of the line prosecutors signing off on this, working on this. She had to literally alter herself, some of the language in court, which is very unusual. And it shows you that, at this point, she’s kind of in this on her own in this U.S. Attorney’s office.
Virulently anti-Trump correspondent Rachel Scott was also disgusted Trump “campaigned on this idea of retribution, that he would go after his perceived political enemies.”
Then came an unfortunate slip-up:
She went on by decrying Trump’s “extraordinary steps to make this idea of retribution a reality,” such as having “stripped security clearances from some top former and current national security officials...revoked Secret Service protections from some of his harshest critics, including John Bolton, former Vice President Kamala Harris, forced out federal prosecutors...and then, just days ago, the extraordinary and remarkable statement from the President publicly calling on his own attorney general, who represents an independent, impartial Justice Department, to not just go after Comey, but also to go after New York Attorney General Letitia James, to go after Democratic Senator Adam Schiff.”
CBS Mornings and NBC’s Today were definitely alarmed and led with the Comey indictment, but weren’t ready to jump out a window.
“The President demanding something for a while, the indictment of one of his most outspoken critics and he got it. Overnight, Trump’s Justice Department indicted former FBI Director James Comey, a dramatic escalation in the president's push against so-called enemies. In a video posted to social media Comey, meanwhile, maintains he's innocent and says, ‘Let’s have a trial,’” declared CBS co-host Tony Dokoupil.
Legal analyst Christine Polisi was able to express her disagreement without flying off the rail (click “expand”):
Crazy case. Just to start out with the strength of these charges. Look, the federal government in general has about a 90 percent success rate when it comes to obtaining a guilty charge after an indictment. There are unique characteristics of this case that make it a potential outlier, meaning I think the prosecutors may have an uphill battle here, not the least of which is the fact that this case has been languishing for five years. They got this indictment in just under the wire, the statute of limitations.
This case has been run up and down the flagpole many times before, including as Scott noted there, the previous United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, apparently declined to prosecute this case because he didn't feel the evidence was there. Trump had to remove him, insert a personal attorney. She's the only one that signed this indictment. Very rare. So very rare. Never prosecuted a case. Very rare for a United States attorney herself to go into the grand jury to present that evidence and to sign that indictment.
That said, CBS brought in far-left partisan Douglas Brinkley to weigh in since he’s a “presidential historian.” Following predictable comparisons of Trump to Richard Nixon and Andrew Jackson, he seethed about Trump’s “authoritarian bent”:
Shifting to Today, co-host Craig Melvin dubbed the indictment “a provocative move by the Justice Department” with senior legal correspondent Laura Jarrett — the daughter of Obama family confidante Valerie Jarrett — saying the indictment was “only two pages long, but the lead-up years in the making as the President demanded the prosecution of James Comey long before it was ever clear that prosecutors could actually make a criminal case.”
“The extraordinary move posing a new stress test for the Justice Department forced to now defend these charges in court,” she added.
To see the relevant transcripts from September 26, click here (for ABC) and here (for CBS).