Alex Jones’ attempt at an immunity deal reveals just how hard the DOJ is going after Donald Trump and Trump world
In the roughly 48 hours since the news broke that Alex Jones is attempting to negotiate an immunity deal with the Department of Justice, we’ve seen a wide variety of reactions. The doomsday pundits have tried to drown out this good news by insisting more cartoonishly than ever that the DOJ is doing “nothing” and that Trump world has gotten away with it all. But back in the real world, some reasonable folks are raising some worthwhile questions about the Jones news.
Some folks have correctly pointed out that the DOJ arbitrarily giving Alex Jones immunity would be a dangerous idea. He comes off as hallucinatory paranoid delusional in his public persona, which means he’s either severely mentally unstable or a con artist. Either way, this isn’t someone the DOJ can trust to tell the truth. Nor would Jones come off as a credible witness to nearly any jury.
These are valid concerns. But the DOJ wasn’t born yesterday, and knows all of this. The DOJ would only even consider giving someone like Jones a cooperation deal if he’s able to provide evidence (text messages, etc) to support his claims. To use a legal metaphor, if an untrustworthy person tells you where the bodies are buried, and you actually find the bodies there, then you no longer need the witness to be seen as credible by the jury, because now you have the bodies.
All that said, the DOJ doesn’t just go around handing out immunity to major criminal targets who claim to have a good story to tell about even bigger criminal targets. Alex Jones would likely have to go through a proffer session, where he has to put all of his cards on the table, and then the DOJ decides how much leniency to offer him in return. There’s a specific legal process for these kinds of situations, and it exists specifically to avoid the kinds of pitfalls that some of you are concerned about.
But the real story here is not whether Alex Jones ends up getting a deal from the DOJ. The real story is that Alex Jones wants a deal. Even as the doomsday pundits keep yelling “DOJ is doing nothing” and “Trump world has gotten away with it all,” the people in Trump world know better. Alex Jones is only offering to sell out everyone else in Trump world because he believes the DOJ is going to put him in prison over January 6th, and he’s desperately trying to avoid going to prison.
In other words, even a whack job like Alex Jones has a better understanding than most political pundits do when it comes to just how hard the DOJ is going at Trump world behind the scenes. Of course probes look different when you’re being targeted by them. The DOJ has had a secret grand jury targeting the likes of Jones and his pals for several months, but that grand jury has only been public knowledge for three weeks. The DOJ has secretly had a high profile prosecutor heading up its criminal probe into Trump world for months, but that knowledge has only been public for days. You tend to have a better sense of a criminal probe when you and/or your pals are the ones being targeted by subpoenas and such.
Jones’ desire to cut a deal with the DOJ gives away just how keenly aware he and other Trump world folks are that the DOJ is coming after all of them. Whether Jones is given a deal is almost irrelevant. Because Jones just bizarrely announced to the media that he’s seeking a deal (keep in mind, he is unstable), it’ll just set off a feeding frenzy in which other Trump world people decide they want to be the first to cut a deal. And of course any such deal will require not only giving up everyone else in Trump world, but also giving up Donald Trump himself.
But because most of the media and pundit class is still trying to milk the “DOJ is doing nothing” narrative for ratings and attention, we’re still being given far too little insight and context about this DOJ Trump probe. You know the pundits are out to lunch on this when Alex Jones of all people is providing more reliable insight into this probe than the pundits are.
Federal criminal probes of this type aren’t meant to have their every detail bandied about publicly in real time. The DOJ flips key players by pitting them against each other, strategically keeping them in the dark until it’s ready to spring things on them, and so on. But when details do occasionally surface about the DOJ Trump probe, it reveals that the probe is massive in scope, and much further along than we’d been led to believe. It’s time for the media and pundit class to stop using the information vacuum as an excuse to histrionically claim that “nothing” is being done, and start acknowledging that this DOJ Trump probe is shaping up to be the investigation of the century into the crime of the century.
