Turns out the GOP was right to hit the panic button about the DOJ and Donald Trump
When the Department of Justice cut a seditious conspiracy plea deal last week with Roger Stone’s Oath Keeper driver, it was by far the most significant development in the DOJ’s January 6th probe. It meant the DOJ now has Stone nailed, and if it can convince Stone to cut his own deal, then it’ll finally have its inside cooperating witness against Donald Trump. It felt like the turning point in the ongoing question of whether the DOJ will ultimately charge Trump – and we weren’t the only ones who saw it that way.
Shortly after that plea deal was announced, congressional Republicans began openly threatening the DOJ with retaliation if it dares to criminally charge Trump. This was a dead giveaway that the Republicans saw the news of the Oath Keeper plea deal against Stone, and came to fear that the DOJ might indeed end up charging Trump. It turns out the Republicans had good reason for this fear.
Earlier this week the DOJ arrested Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, with an indictment which gives away that at least three different inside witnesses have been cooperating against Tarrio. Even while acquiring these three witnesses from Tarrio’s circle, the DOJ managed to avoid tipping off anyone else in Tarrio’s circle that the criminal case was even being built. In other words, the Garland DOJ really does know how to operate in the kind of stealth mode that literally catches suspects in their underwear who had no idea they were even criminal targets. Notably, Tarrio has reportedly worked as an informant against his own organization in the past, strongly suggesting he’ll flip again.
So now we know that the DOJ has the cooperation of an Oath Keepers leader who’s close to Roger Stone, the cooperation of at least three unknown people who are close to the Proud Boys leader, and possibly soon the cooperation of the Proud Boys leader – plus whoever else the DOJ may have flipped while operating in this stealth mode.
And now, in a rare media interview today, Merrick Garland is suddenly making clear that the DOJ will not avoid going after high profile political targets if they fit the existing DOJ criteria for prosecution. In other words, Garland now seems to want the public to know that the DOJ is indeed targeting people like Trump.
Up to now, we’ve suspected that the DOJ was just fine with the media’s ratings-driven false narratives that the DOJ was doing “nothing” about Trump world. Better that, than have the media sniffing around and trying to uncover the details of ongoing DOJ investigations into Trump world. But now that the DOJ finally has a cooperating witness in hand against a top Trump henchman – and now that the GOP is so scared of what this means, it’s openly making threats against the DOJ – Garland seems to want everyone to know that prosecution of Trump world is coming. The Republicans hit the panic button when they began making these threats, and now Garland is letting them know that they were right to be panicked.
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report