How the DOJ managed to do the impossible and come up with inside witnesses against Donald Trump
There are those out there who will simply insist on continuing to angrily rant about Merrick Garland and the DOJ until Donald Trump is arrested. However, much of that frustration comes not from the fact that things are “taking so long” but rather that so few people seem to be familiar with what it takes to build the kind of case against a crime boss that can actually get a conviction at trial.
When you look back at how crime bosses including the original “Teflon Don” John Gotti were convicted at trial, and in fact just about every tricky federal criminal case has succeeded over the years, you see one common thread. The DOJ makes a point of flipping the crime boss’ top underlings and turning them into witnesses for the prosecution.
The challenge when it comes to Donald Trump’s classified documents scandal is he doesn’t appear to have involved any of his usual political henchmen. So how is the DOJ supposed to find and flip cooperating witnesses? This appears to be at least part of why the DOJ has made the moves that it’s made in this case over the past several months – including goading Trump’s lawyers to produce a document falsely claiming that there were no remaining classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
That document represents felony obstruction of justice. Anyone on Trump’s legal team who knew it was a lie and still helped craft it, is guilty of obstruction. Anyone on Trump’s team who crafted it but didn’t know it was a lie, is now legally required to testify against those who did know it was a lie. The crime-fraud exception is one of the few things that obliterates attorney-client privilege, and now Trump’s team of lawyers are knee deep in it.
The DOJ has now reportedly gotten one of Trump’s current attorneys (Christina Bobb) to testify and incriminate Trump’s other current attorneys, who will now be pressured to flip on Trump. The DOJ’s strategy here is just brilliant. We’re looking at the very realistic possibility of Trump’s own current attorneys testifying against him at his criminal trial. We’re not talking about former attorneys who represented him years ago and have long since become his adversaries; we’re talking about the lawyers who are still representing him in this case.
This kind of feat normally wouldn’t be possible. Of course it helps that Trump’s current attorneys are stupid and in over their heads, and were allegedly willing to commit crimes to help Trump cover up his crimes. But they sure must have thought they wouldn’t get caught, or they wouldn’t have done it. Now they really have no choice but to testify against Trump. This could end up leaving Trump with devastating inside witnesses against him, and no lawyers left by the time he gets to trial.
So for those who keep chanting “Arrest Trump right this minute!!!” and other angry slogans, it’s really not about having “patience” or “waiting for the DOJ to cross all the t’s and dot all the i’s” or any other notions that suggest the DOJ is moving slowly. Instead it’s really about understanding just how massively complicated it is to get a conviction against a crime boss – even one who is “obviously” guilty. Juries aren’t told to convict people just for seeming obviously guilty. They’re told to look for guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Inside witnesses are what make the difference. In a case where there didn’t seem to be any, the DOJ has somehow managed to create inside witnesses anyway. And that’s how these things really work, if the goal is indeed to get Trump convicted and not merely indicted.
