No wonder the DOJ went there
When Jack Smith and the DOJ brought a superseding indictment against Donald Trump today, it included the charge of conspiring to destroy Mar-a-Lago surveillance tapes after the Feds had requested them.
You see now why the DOJ did things during the course of this probe such as asking for the surveillance tapes. The DOJ wasn’t using kid gloves or showing Trump any deferential treatment. It wasn’t a case of the DOJ naively thinking that Trump would cooperate. It was to goad Trump into doing something like trying to destroy the tapes so they could also charge him for that, which ensures an almost automatic conviction at trial even if the jury ends up not liking the underlying charges.
It’s the same reason the DOJ asked Trump and his attorneys to search his properties for classified documents. Again, it wasn’t “kid gloves” or some naive expectation that Trump and his people would act in good faith. It was done with the expectation that Trump and his people would act in bad faith. Once Trump’s attorneys signed a document falsely claiming that there were no remaining classified documents, it backed them into a corner and allowed Jack Smith to ultimately use them as grand jury witnesses against him – and they’ll be made to testify against him again at trial.
It’s just how the Feds tend to operate. It’s no different than with any other criminal. And now they have Trump nailed on additional charges that increase the odds he ends up convicted and in prison. It’s why you have to tune out the kind of people on TV and Twitter who spend every day trying to make you feel outraged about how these probes have been carried out. These types either have no idea how any of this stuff even works (or are pretending not to know for effect). And they’re counting on you not knowing how anything works.
In any case, we keep seeing that more and more of the criminal charges against Donald Trump and his co-conspirators were specifically made possible because the Feds made smart strategic moves that idiots on the internet spent the whole time bashing the Feds for. At this point the people investigating and prosecuting Trump have more than proven that they know what they’re doing, and that they’re likely to get the vast majority of their moves correct going forward. So let’s trust them, instead of listening to the folks in the cheap seats who have been hyperbolically (and it turns out utterly cluelessly) bashing the prosecutors from the start.
