One thing we know for certain about Donald Trump’s downfall
I spent the first half of this year being called an “optimist” for simply pointing to the various data points which made fairly clear that the DOJ was not only investigating Donald Trump, but pretty far down the road in that investigation. Now that the DOJ’s moves are becoming much more public, we’re seeing that it’s targeting Trump on more serious charges than I was predicting. And I’m supposedly the “optimist” of the pundit class.
It’s a reminder of two things. First, as I often like to point out, I’m not an optimist. I just try to give you a realistic take on where things appear to be, based on the evidence and data points available. If my analysis has sounded “optimistic,” it’s only because so many other pundits have been yelling baseless and easily disproven doomsday hysteria like “there are no indications that the DOJ is investigating Trump at all.”
Second, and far more importantly, we’re now seeing that all along, the DOJ has been well ahead of where anyone thought it was. It demonstrated that when it carried out the Mar-a-Lago search warrant. It demonstrated that again when it unsealed the warrant, revealing how it had painstakingly crafted a criminal case against Trump that isn’t even dependent upon whether the stolen documents were classified or declassified; it’s enough that he illegally possessed them. Moreover, the DOJ clearly has cooperators within Mar-a-Lago, has surveillance footage of Trump’s people moving the classified boxes around, has a signed letter from Trump’s lawyer falsely asserting that the boxes had all been returned, and so on.
The one thing we keep seeing for certain in all this is that the DOJ is way out ahead of the rest of us. Of course that’s been the case all year. Everyone was shocked when the DOJ arrested the entire Oath Keepers and Proud Boys leadership in January. Everyone was shocked when the DOJ carried out search and seizure warrants against Eastman and Clark. Everyone was shocked when the DOJ had Pat Cipollone and Mike Pence’s senior staff testify against Trump to a grand jury.
Part of that is because the media and pundit class has spent all year chasing ratings in a way that’s set baselessly low expectations for the DOJ, making it easy for the DOJ to exceed those expectations. But part of it is that the DOJ spends every day working on taking Donald Trump down – it just doesn’t tell us what it’s working on each day. Even now, we have no idea what the DOJ is doing to Trump right now, today, at this moment. We might find out next week or next month. That’s pretty much the point. If we don’t know what’s happening, neither does Trump, meaning he can’t gameplan against it. And that increases his odds of being convicted at trial.
