Everything is happening to Donald Trump all at once now
When Donald Trump lost and tried to avoid leaving office, it was because he knew that without the protections of the presidency, he was on a path to prison one way or the other. After the Manhattan DA punted, it’s taken the Feds roughly as long as the glacially slow Feds usually take to bring federal criminal charges. But we’re up against it now, and a lot of things are suddenly moving fast.
Yesterday the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals fully put Trump’s special master stunt out of its misery, clearing what appears to be the final major hurdle in the DOJ’s effort to criminally indict Trump for stealing classified secrets.
This came even as a federal court separately ruled that former Trump White House Counsel Pat Cipollone must give full testimony to the grand jury in the DOJ’s criminal probe into Trump’s actions related to January 6th. This comes days after it was reported that longtime Trump adviser Stephen Miller has testified to that same grand jury.
Last night the New York Times also reported that multiple Trump associates, including his longtime social media guy Dan Scavino, have recently testified to the DOJ grand jury in the classified documents case.
In other words, a number of aspects of the DOJ’s various criminal investigations into Donald Trump, which had been twisting in the wind for some time, are now coming together rather quickly.
Newly appointed Special Counsel Jack Smith has clearly hit the ground running. He promised there would be no delays of any kind, and there haven’t been. But some of these recent developments were put into motion shortly before Smith was appointed. This is perhaps less about Smith coming in and cracking proverbial heads, and more about the long struggle to build this kind of federal criminal indictment finally reaching the endgame, and Merrick Garland having chosen to appoint Smith at this particular time because these criminal cases against Trump simply need a closer. In any case, we all know where this is heading now.
