The first shoe may have just dropped

| 9:09 am EST March 4, 2021
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With the Manhattan District Attorney having a slam dunk criminal case against Donald Trump for financial crimes, and the Fulton County District Attorney going to a grand jury this week with a criminal case against Trump for his election fraud, it’s becoming more clear why Trump is going to end up in prison. But what about all the corrupt people he put in office?

The first shoe appeared to drop last night when the DOJ leaked to the media that the Department of Transportation referred a criminal case to the DOJ against Elaine Chao in December. The only reason for the DOJ to leak this is if it has the expectation that it may end up prosecuting Chao once Attorney General Merrick Garland is in place later this month.

But as Rachel Maddow reminded us all last night, Chao is the fourth Trump cabinet member who is confirmed to have been referred to the DOJ for criminal prosecution. Those cases obviously never went anywhere while Trump and Barr had their thumb on the DOJ. But there’s no reason not to expect that the newly liberated DOJ will go ahead and pursue all of these criminal cases against Trump people, assuming the cases are legitimate.

In fact, when you consider that Elaine Chao is married to Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, this could help explain why McConnell’s Republican Party has made such an effort in the Senate to try to delay Merrick Garland’s inevitable confirmation. Is this a matter of the GOP Senate trying to protect McConnell’s wife? In any case, Garland has a 100% chance of confirmation, and it’ll happen this month – so stalling isn’t going to save anyone from any criminal charges that might be coming.