The end of Donald Trump
It’s worth noting that the DOJ never did announce that it had carried out a search and seizure warrant at Donald Trump’s home. Trump did that himself. This criminal probe would all likely still be playing out in secret until Trump is indicted.
But because Trump’s antics forced it to play out in public, DOJ apparently decided to take control of the narrative by revealing Trump stole nuclear secrets. And that’s fair game. Trump didn’t just publicly reveal he’s under DOJ investigation. He lied to the public about the details of the DOJ’s work. And he publicly told a judge the seized evidence could be legally viewed and sorted by a special master, when he knew it couldn’t.
This was all going to come out when Trump was indicted. It would have come out of nowhere, and the headline would have been that Trump was arrested for stealing nuclear secrets. Instead, because Trump forced the issue, we’re getting that headline ahead of his arrest.
Some folks are still, understandably, asking what the “hold up” is. But if these recent court filings and such have shown us anything, it’s that there is no hold up, it’s just a long and complex process to bring these kinds of charges. There are a ton of intermediate steps such as grand jury testimony, obtaining and carrying out warrants, court hearings to deal with evidence seized under those warrants, updating the grand jury with the details, and so on. To yell “just indict him already” is to ignore that his indictment is perhaps step fifty in the process, and the DOJ might still be on step forty-one, even as it moves forward through the legal maze as quickly as it reasonably can.
So when will Trump be arrested? As I’ve said all along, I don’t care when it happens. I only care that the eventual indictment(s) are enough to guarantee a conviction at trial. But at the least, we’re close enough that the DOJ feels comfortable letting the public know about the nuclear stuff, which it knows will ramp up the public’s demand for his arrest tenfold. And while this DOJ doesn’t seem to care all that much about the public’s griping, it’s difficult to imagine it putting the nuclear stuff out there now and then waiting a year to arrest him.
If we were to make an educated guess based on gut feeling – and at this point it would still be based largely just on gut feeling – one might say that the odds are 50% the DOJ arrests Trump before the midterms, and 50% it arrests him not too long after the midterms. But again, the goal isn’t to get Trump in handcuffs as quickly as possible. He’s still just sitting there, whining and rotting and pretending none of this is really happening to him, and continuing to screw up his potential trial defenses by running his mouth. He’s surely under federal surveillance. He’s not going to be able to just magically flee the country, or secretly meet with foreign enemies. He’s cornered, powerless, and awaiting his arrest. It’ll come soon enough. Not soon enough for the impatient, but soon enough.
