Thomas Jefferson, like Trmp, had it in for his former Vice President, in his case, Aaron Burr. Reading Jefferson's Vendetta: The Pursuit of Aaron Burr and the Judiciary by Joseph Wheelan (NY: Carroll and Graff Publishers, 2005 ISBN 0-7867-1437-9) it seems Jefferson did just about everything in his power to railroad Burr into a treason conviction even though he knew, before the trial, Burr was not planning an armed insurrection against USAmerica (he learned it from Dr Justus Bollman whom he’d had arrested without warrant, transported without charge to Washington DC, and held in the Marine barracks there). Jefferson appropriated monies on his own to hire prosecutors and transport and house the witnesses against Burr, without Congressional authorization.
Before the trial, "Eager to hear the real story behind the Burr conspiracy, Jefferson had [Dr Justus] Bollman brought [from his cell in the Marine Barracks] to Secretary of State Madison’s office to meet with Jefferson and Madison. Bollman extracted a promise from Jefferson to guard the confidentiality of what he was about to say. “The P. assured him that nothing which he might say of acknowledge, should be made use of against himself,” said Madison’s notes of the January 23 meeting. Jefferson and Madison also assured Bollman that is was a 'settled rule’ that no such statement made to a government official 'could be extorted from him as a witness' in court. Although he would later discover this to be untrue, Bollman believed at the time that he was safe from self-incrimination, and proceeded to tell his story.
"Burr’s sole purpose was to lead an expedition against Mexico, said Bollman.”
Jefferson also "had appropriated $11,000 from the government’s 'continuing fund' for US Attorney George Hayt to hire prosecutors. But much more than that was being spent to transport and lodge a hundred and forty government witnesses from nearly every region; in all, the Jefferson administration would spend nearly $100,000, without congressional authorization, the rough equivalent of $2 million today. Besides throwing open the executive purse, the president had sent Hay a sheaf of blank pardons. Use them, he instructed Hay, “at your discretion, if you should find a defect of evidence, and believe that this would supply it…”
This is also the case where John Marshall, presiding as a circuit court judge for this trial, ruled that even a President is subject to a subpoena, just like any other person under the law. However, this most definitely non-lawyer wonders whether the recent Supreme Court decision on [Republican] President immunity may have made that concept moot, one reason I’d like to see the resemblances and historical rhymes between Jefferson’s actions against Burr and Trmp’s against Comey, James, and, it seems, Bolton and other parties to be named later more widely discussed.
The icing on the cake was that James Wilkinson was the chief witness against Burr. He had been a general in the Revolutionary War and forced to resign but twice became the Senior Officer of the Army, the highest rank. He was also a career-long Spanish spy, an accusation that Burr and his lawyers made but did not prove although "he had changed his story at least once about the nature of his correspondence with Burr.”
Interesting to see that Trmp is, in some ways, just like the Founders. After all, there’s also John Adams’ Alien and Sedition Acts, which Trmp has also dabbled in.
