George Santos is going to prison long before the 2024 election – and so is Donald Trump

When I predicted months ago that the DOJ would end up putting George Santos in prison, I wasn’t being optimistic. He was reportedly under DOJ criminal investigation for financial fraud, proof of his crimes seemed to be right there on paper, and there wasn’t much doubt where things would go. My prediction wasn’t “optimism” – it was merely the most likely and obvious outcome. Now he’s indeed been indicted, and everyone pretty much intuitively gets that he’s going to prison.

I only point this out because of how it dovetails with the prediction I’m best known for, which is that Donald Trump is also going to prison. I’ve never seen this as an “optimistic” prediction, but rather an obvious one. All along – since long before Jack Smith – the DOJ has been working to convince the courts to strike down things like executive privilege, in order to gain the testimony necessary to nail Trump for his biggest crimes. The holdup was always the court’s extremely weighty burden for reaching such a threshold, and was never attributable to the “DOJ dragging its heels” or any of the other simplistic nonsense that passes for popular political punditry.

Now that the DOJ has met the court’s bar and obtained the testimony of these witnesses, that’s the ballgame. Trump will soon be indicted. There will be plenty of time to hold his trial, convict him, sentence him, and imprison him, long before the 2024 election gets particularly serious. And as we just saw with the E. Jean Carroll trial, Trump does not magically have the ability to delay trials for as long as he likes. There are a finite number of tactics Trump can use to try to delay his federal criminal trial, and Jack Smith has already baked these things into the timeframe that he’s using for deciding when to indict Trump.

There is also another aspect to the George Santos indictment that spells bad news for Donald Trump. Based on the vagueness of how Santos’ $750,000 in mystery money is addressed in the indictment, it appears the DOJ is still investigating the matter – which could result in additional charges down the line, against Santos or potential co-conspirators. But even with the overall Santos probe seemingly not yet complete, the DOJ went ahead and indicted him this week anyway.

If the DOJ feels that it has a winning criminal case against a politician, it’s going to indict that politician. Being a declared candidate for the next election does not in any way shield anyone from criminal indictment. But when the DOJ is planning to indict a political candidate, it does have a policy of trying to do so early enough such that the election can still flow freely once that candidate is off the board.

So the fact that George Santos just announced his 2024 campaign may have played a role in the DOJ’s decision to indict him now, on the charges that are ready, rather than wait however much longer it might take for the rest of the probe to play out. It’s also possible that, because Santos is being investigated for campaign finance fraud, the DOJ saw his reelection announcement as an attempt at continuing his crime spree.

Both of these notions spell bad news for Donald Trump. His status as a declared 2024 candidate clearly isn’t going to cause the DOJ to shy away from indicting him. If anything it may prompt the DOJ to indict him sooner than it otherwise would have, in order to take him off the board before people start voting in the primary process. And given that the DOJ is reportedly investigating Trump for wire fraud in relation to his post-2020 fundraising, it may see his 2024 campaign announcement as an attempt at continuing his crime spree, prompting it to indict him more quickly.

The Santos indictment is also an ugly harbinger for Donald Trump in another way. The DOJ managed to charge Santos with thirteen felony counts, a reminder of just how thorough the DOJ is when investigating these kinds of things. And the average observer can look at the fact that he’s been indicted on thirteen financial felonies, including things like wire fraud and money laundering that are easily proven on paper, and figure out that he’s almost certainly going to prison.

It’s easy enough to look at the thirteen felony charges against George Santos, and figure out that the DOJ will surely hit Donald Trump with even more serious charges. After all, Santos is a two bit financial fraudster, while the DOJ is criminally targeting Trump on charges ranging from financial fraud to obstruction to election fraud to espionage. Once you realize how obvious it is that Santos is going to prison, it becomes clear how obvious it is that Trump is also going to prison.

At this point the only argument that Trump will somehow magically avoid prison is based in just that – the notion that he indeed somehow has magical powers. But this is a guy who lost the 2020 election even after he abused the power of the presidency to try to rig it in his favor. This is a guy who lost his attempt at getting the Supreme Court to overturn the election result, even though he put one-third of that Supreme Court in place. This is a guy who lost a trial to E. Jean Carroll and couldn’t even figure out how to mount a defense strategy. Trump has lost essentially every battle he’s faced over the past two and a half years. That’s not going to change when the DOJ hits him with one of the most comprehensive criminal indictments in history and puts him on trial for it.

If you accept the prediction that George Santos is going to prison, you should also accept the prediction that Donald Trump is going to prison. In fact, given the even more serious charges that the DOJ is clearly lining up, the odds of Trump going to prison are even higher than the odds of Santos going to prison. Trump doesn’t have some magic wand. He never has. And at this point all he does is lose. The real threat from the Republican Party no longer comes from Trump. It comes from the next Republican candidate who comes along and is exactly like Trump but tries to convince us otherwise. Trump is done. Let’s be vigilant about whatever threats come after him.