The calm before the storm
For a month or two, there were a whole lot of people out there who just assumed that the federal criminal case against Matt Gaetz must have fallen apart, because they hadn’t seen any headlines about it for awhile. Then a few days ago ABC News confirmed that Joel Greenberg had indeed given up the goods on Gaetz, while other sources confirmed that the Feds have already decided to indict Gaetz.
It was the latest reminder, in a long series of reminders, that a lack of media headlines about an ongoing criminal probe doesn’t in any way mean that the criminal case has slowed down or fallen apart. It just means that the probe is in a stage where prosecutors don’t see any advantage in giving tidbits to the media, and the media is in a stage where it hasn’t been able to forcibly unearth the details that are going on behind the scenes.
It also serves as a reminder that the high profile criminal cases we haven’t heard anything about in awhile are also ongoing. Remember when New York criminally indicted the Trump Organization and Allen Weisselberg? We haven’t heard news about that case in awhile. That’s surely because New York has been building up new avenues for pressuring Weisselberg into flipping, while also readying criminal cases against whichever Trump Organization co-conspirator is next down the line to be pressured into flipping.
Accordingly, the federal criminal case against Rudy Giuliani and fellow Trump lawyer Victoria Toensing hasn’t gone away just because it’s lacked headlines lately. The mere fact that the Feds were able to obtain a warrant to raid their homes, means that they already have enough to indict. It’s coming, obviously.
These indictments are all coming. Don’t bother asking when, because prosecutors don’t publicly reveal their timetables, except when they think it benefits them to do so. But high profile criminal cases don’t just magically disappear – or at least they don’t now that Donald Trump no longer has control of the Department of Justice.
The sheer number of Trump-centric and Trump-related criminal cases known to be brewing right now, which haven’t yet spilled over into arrests, means that it’s currently the calm before the storm. Everyone in Trump world who’s committed a crime is currently waking up every morning, afraid that the stray sound they just heard is from the law enforcement personnel who are there to arrest them. Sooner or later, many of them will see those fears proven correct. If you hate waiting for that day to finally arrive, imagine how much they must hate waiting for it.
