The DOJ just reminded us of what all it’s doing to try to take down Trump world
It took the DOJ more than a year to get a January 6th conviction yesterday against the “Cowboys for Trump” guy. But it’s a good thing the DOJ took the time to build a broad case, because the judge threw out one of the charges. If that had been the only charge, he’d have gone free.
This is why federal criminal cases take so long to result in arrest, and why they nearly always result in conviction. Sometimes you have the bad luck to draw a bad judge or a tepid jury. Sometimes a key piece of evidence gets tossed out. You can’t see these things coming. Nor can you generally fix them after they’ve gone wrong. You can only prepare for the possibility that they’re going to happen. The DOJ takes the time to pile on with enough evidence and charges that you always end up getting convicted on SOMETHING.
You don’t have to agree with the approach. But you do have to acknowledge that it is the approach being taken. It’s why pundits who say things like “DOJ is doing nothing” or “If this person were going to be indicted it would have happened by now” are speaking gibberish.
This is why the DOJ has taken the time to flip three cooperating witnesses (that we know of) against Gaetz. Do you want to see Gaetz go to trial, just to be acquitted and go free? No, and neither does the DOJ. That’s why the DOJ is building such an overwhelming case.
The DOJ took the time to build overwhelming cases against all those Oath Keepers leaders, prompting one of them to flip – and it just happened to be Roger Stone’s driver. Now the DOJ appears to also be trying to flip the Proud Boys leader against Stone. It’s how it works.
If and when Stone is indicted, it won’t be on two or three charges, it’ll be on ten or twenty. That ensures a conviction at trial. And it forces Stone to realize he’ll be convicted, which motivates him to flip on Trump instead of taking a year to go to trial.
We keep seeing two things over and over. The first is that the DOJ is indeed building criminal cases aimed at continuing to flip January 6th criminals upward. The second is that the DOJ is taking enough time to build these cases in such comprehensive fashion as to make sure they result in cooperation or conviction. These are the publicly visible facts of the matter. All of the defeatist hand wringing is just noise.
