The DOJ is doing a whole lot more to Trump world than the pundits would have you think
It’s been widely confirmed for months that the DOJ has been having Capitol attackers formally affirm in their guilty pleas that Trump incited them to do it. Translation: cooperating witnesses. So the pundits saying “I see no signs the DOJ is investigating Trump” aren’t looking very hard.
Does this alone prove the DOJ is going to charge Trump? No. It merely proves that the DOJ is collecting cooperating witnesses against Trump. But it does destroy the popular narrative that “there are no signs the DOJ is investigating Trump.” Yet pundits keep repeating it anyway.
The only thing we haven’t yet seen is the DOJ indicting anyone in Trump’s innermost circle. If and when that happens, we’ll start to see things leak out about the case, because those who get indicted will get to start seeing some of the mechanics of the overall investigation.
But the DOJ’s seditious conspiracy plea deal this week with Roger Stone’s driver means that, barring something unexpected falling through along the way, Stone will end up indicted. The text of the Bannon contempt indictment suggests the DOJ has been building a much broader case against him. And so on.
If and when the DOJ indicts Trump’s innermost circle, it’ll presumably pressure them to flip on Trump. And if one or more of them does, it’ll build a case against Trump based on those inside witnesses. If it fails to flip anyone against Trump, then it probably won’t indict him, because the odds of winning at trial tend to be low when these “mafia boss” cases don’t have the cooperation of a top consigliere. Pretty straightforward, right?
What the DOJ is clearly not doing (not yet at least) is going to all of Trump’s underlings and telling them they’ll end up indicted down the road unless they give stuff up on Trump. Robert Mueller tried this approach, and then Trump’s underlings usually just went and told Trump and the public everything Mueller was doing. Given that Mueller’s probe ended up being a case study in how not to take Trump down, maybe the Garland DOJ has learned from that and is being more discreet in terms of tipping its hand.
Anyway, aside from specifics such as the 1/6 attacker affidavits against Trump, the plea deal against Stone, the Bannon incitement text, etc, we don’t know what all the DOJ is or isn’t doing with Trump world. All we know is it’s doing a lot of things. We don’t know what it’ll all add up to.
Unfortunately, these unknowns create an environment where pundits can get a ton viral tweets and MSNBC bookings simply by ignoring all the mounting evidence that the DOJ is targeting Trump, and instead claiming to know with near certainly that it’s not targeting Trump.
The DOJ could clear up all these pundit hijinks, but not without tipping its hand about ongoing criminal cases. The DOJ’s job is to put the bad guys away when possible. The DOJ’s job is not to “reassure” the public each time full of crap pundits go on TV and spew defeatist hyperbole.
The DOJ may even prefer it this way. If the media is busy chasing ratings by falsely insisting the DOJ is doing “nothing” about Trump world, then the media isn’t working on digging up the details of what the DOJ is doing about Trump world.
The tough part about having to defend the Garland DOJ is that I don’t have any way of knowing what all they are or aren’t doing with Trump world, so I don’t know if I’ll approve when it’s all said and done. Yet I still feel compelled to push back against the easily disproven lies that the DOJ is doing “nothing,” because it’s so obviously untrue, and yet so many people mistakenly believe it.
