Democrats destroyed the norms they want Trump to follow

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction: That law holds in politics as much as in physics.

Yet Democrats are now squawking about President Donald Trump “removing guardrails” and “destroying norms” by seeking to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey — after they spent 10 years blowing up every legal precedent to bankrupt, embarrass and imprison their political enemy No.1.

How convenient, this amnesia about their own norm-smashing.

Yes, the United States (and the modern West generally) has a long tradition of not using the legal system to achieve political goals: The party in power didn’t weaponize its control of the Justice Department to destroy its opponents, even if only to avoid suffering the same abuse when the opposition took over.

But that was BT — before Trump.

Obama administration insiders began destroying those guardrails in 2016, when they played along with the Hillary Clinton campaign’s disinformation operation to smear Trump as a Russian stooge colluding with Vladimir Putin to seize the White House.

High Obama officials abused our intelligence agencies and Justice Department, including the FBI, to advance the Russiagate hoax — massively ramping up the abuse after Trump unexpectedly won, in a bid to cripple the new president and perhaps even get him impeached.

Comey played a central role from the start — particularly with a cynical frame-up to force out Gen. Mike Flynn, the Team Trump figure with the best chance of unravelling the ongoing intel op against the new prez.

Crucially, high officials also leaked classified information to media outlets similarly eager to destroy Trump — whipping up a Washington fever that had even relatively nonpartisan officials fearing the sitting president was a traitor.

The entirely bogus scandals kneecapped Trump for years, ruining the lives of Flynn and other top aides.

This also implanted lies firmly in liberal minds: Most Democrats still don’t realize the Steele dossier was a complete fiction, nor that the FBI and Justice lawyers lied to the courts to obtain wiretaps of Trump associates.

And some partisans stayed on through the entire Trump presidency: The FBI had the Hunter Biden laptop more than a year before The Post got access — yet instead of following the many leads, the bureau organized a campaign of lies to discredit any news stories that might come out before the election.

And so other media and social media companies were primed to suppress The Post’s scoops in the campaign’s final weeks.

And once Trump was out of office, Democrats waged a multi-jurisdictional effort to destroy him.

They pretended that a protest-turned-riot at the Capitol was a seditious insurrection, and arrested Trump’s political and legal advisers.

President Joe Biden let it be known to The New York Times that he was furious at Attorney General Merrick Garland’s failure to charge Trump with crimes — a message every bit as public as any Truth Social post.

This soon had the feds invading his home to hunt for stray documents to charge him criminally, and absurdly, with having stolen them.

Elsewhere, Democrats used his normal language about vote-counting and “finding votes” to confect a conspiracy to “steal” the 2020 election.

They combed through his business records to invent a criminal campaign violation because of how certain payments were booked — even though these were private files that had no bearing on anything outside of Trump’s company.

They colluded with New York’s attorney general to contrive mortgage fraud that had no basis in any complaint by or harm to any party.

In sum, Democrats warped the American legal system until it was unrecognizable.

They set a new basis for justice — law for one’s friends, prison for one’s enemies.

They made “lawfare” a household word.

Comey’s defenders aren’t even claiming that he didn’t commit perjury in 2020, when he denied having ever leaked, or asking someone else to leak, classified information to the press.

But his office did leak information, and all fingers to point to him.

And, again, those leaks were in service to the larger anti-Trump plot.

So it’s entirely understandable that the president is now pushing hard for justice to be done.

Yes, his public comments could lead anyone to conclude he’s simply siccing the Justice Department on his political enemies, with no regard for the spirit or even letter of the law.

But his actions are only following precedents that Democrats set in their eagerness to destroy Trump and his “deplorable” movement.

Do we like having a political system based on giving as good as you got, and hitting back twice as hard?

Not at all. But the gang that prepared this poisoned feast can’t cry when they have to eat it too.