Rachel Maddow explains why the window is now wide open to nail Donald Trump

| 9:34 pm EDT May 5, 2021
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When a federal judge ruled yesterday that a secret DOJ memo must be released which proves that Bill Barr lied about why he was blocking Donald Trump from being criminally prosecuted, Palmer Report pointed out that it meant Barr and Trump both now have to worry about facing felony obstruction of justice charges.

Now Rachel Maddow is using her show tonight to remind everyone that, “No, the statute of limitations isn’t up” when it comes to those obstruction of justice charges, and that the DOJ can in fact still criminally indict Trump for it. We suspect the statute of limitations is on pause anyway, which tends to happen whenever someone takes illegal action to delay their own prosecution.

This means that Merrick Garland will now have to decide whether to have the DOJ indict, arrest, and try Donald Trump for obstruction of justice. We think two things come into play. First, the Mueller report already documents eleven instances of Trump committing obstruction, so the investigatory work is done, and it’s just a matter of sending it to grand jury. It’s not as if Garland is deciding whether to have the DOJ start from scratch on something.

Second, Merrick Garland just showed us who he is when he signed off on (or didn’t stand in the way of) the Rudy Giuliani raid. Garland has clearly decided that justice should be served, and that criminal prosecutions shouldn’t be shied away from just because they might be politically uncomfortable.

This suggests that there’s a real possibility the DOJ will end up criminally indicting Donald Trump on federal charges. Of course New York is already deep into the process of indicting Trump on state level charges for his financial crimes, so Trump is going to prison either way. But a federal case, in addition to the New York State case, would be icing on the cake.