More evidence emerges that the DOJ is building a criminal case against Donald Trump
Over the past week a number of breadcrumbs have emerged suggesting that the Department of Justice is indeed building a criminal case against Donald Trump. For instance last week the New York Times reported that the DOJ has recently begun having January 6th Capitol attackers confirm in their guilty pleas that they believed Trump had instructed them to carry out the attack.
Back in 2018, a guy named Brandon Straka led a movement aimed at convincing liberals to “walk away” from the Democratic Party. The whole thing was suspicious from the start, and there were even allegations that it was a Russia-backed effort. Straka ended up being a part of the pro-Trump Capitol attack, and has since pleaded guilty. But Huffington Post is reporting that when the DOJ asked him to confirm Trump’s culpability in the attack, Straka instead went out of his way to defend Trump.
As with all things related to Straka, this is just bizarre. But here’s the thing. Straka, who is facing up to six months in prison, will not magically get off the hook by defending Trump. If anything, his refusal to flip on Trump will result in a longer sentence, not a shorter one. And this doesn’t really help Trump any, because the DOJ has reportedly already successfully gotten multiple other Capitol attackers to confirm Trump’s culpability in their own guilty pleas.
The real upshot here is that the DOJ is clearly working to get as many Capitol attackers as possible to formally blame Donald Trump in their guilty pleas. First we had the New York Times report that the DOJ had begun this process. Now we have confirmation from the Straka court filings that the DOJ is continuing this process with additional Capitol attackers. This doesn’t prove that the DOJ will ultimately bring charges against Trump. But it does prove that the DOJ is amassing cooperating witnesses against Trump, and the only reason to do that is with the intention of trying to build a strong enough case against Trump to justify charging him.
