Get ready for the media to completely lose the plot tomorrow in the Fulton County DA’s criminal case against Donald Trump
A few weeks ago Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis asked a judge not to publicly release her special grand jury report yet, because she’s in the process of bringing imminent indictments – and the judge agreed. It’s plainly obvious that the report isn’t the story; the forthcoming indictments are the story.
But since that time, the (entire) mainstream media has treated this report as if it were somehow the biggest story of all time. Major media outlets even went into court and demanded that the report be released. In order to appease the media, the judge is releasing generic portions of the report tomorrow. But the judge has already made it clear he’s not going to prematurely release any part of the report that gives away anything about the indictment process.
So what exactly are we going to get tomorrow? Probably nothing, or next to nothing. The media has built this up as if it’s going to be the unsealing of King Tut’s tomb. But the media knows that the court is only releasing the portions of the report that are in no way relevant to the ongoing indictment process. So tomorrow will likely be a big letdown – and that’s what concerns me.
Once the media finishes patting itself on the back for getting these generic portions of the report released, the media will have to reckon with the fact that nothing major has been gained from it. More to the point, the media will have to cover its backside after it spent these three weeks telling audiences that this report was going to be released and was going to be earth shaking.
The best case scenario is that the media finds a few sideshow tidbits in tomorrow’s release and decides to run with those. My concern is what happens if there isn’t anything of substance in tomorrow’s release at all. If all this introduction and conclusion do is rehash the fact that Trump committed crimes, then the media won’t have anything to run with tomorrow – in which case the media will decide to go on a histrionic bender about how we’re all doomed because Fani Willis hasn’t indicted Trump yet, and why hasn’t she indicted him, and what’s gone horribly wrong, and why Trump has magically gotten away with it all, and why we should all be hiding under our desk.
Meanwhile back in the real world, Fani Willis is in the process of using this full report (not the generic fraction we’ll see tomorrow) to have a regular grand jury bring criminal indictments. We know this because Willis told the judge as much. We also know this because the judge is still standing by his original plan to sit on the full report until after Willis’ indictments are brought.
But because the media can’t gain any access or information to something as secretive as grand jury indictments, it needed a ratings chew toy in the meantime. This irrelevant procedural report is that ratings chew toy. At best the report is a time killer and a distraction until Willis completes the indictment process. At worst the media will use this red herring of a report to spin up even more ratings-driven doomsday hysteria than ever.
Meanwhile the media has largely gotten audiences to forget that the Fulton County grand jury story is about criminal indictments that are going to put people on trial and in prison. Some partial report is not going to tell us who’s being indicted. The indictments will tell us who’s being indicted. The indictments are 100% of the story. This report is 0% of the story. And the media is likely to spend tomorrow steering us in all kinds of nonsensical directions to try to distract us from the fact that this report was never the story. Indictments are coming in a criminal case against Donald Trump. That’s the entire story.
