We’re finally starting to see a bit of what the DOJ has in store for Trump world
When the Department of Justice arrested Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio on Tuesday morning, they caught him in his underwear, meaning that he had no idea he was on the verge of arrest. When the news of Tarrio’s indictment then hit the newswires, the entire public was caught just as thoroughly off guard.
The DOJ managed to build a complete criminal case against Tarrio – with the apparent help of at least one cooperating witness who provided the full details of Tarrio’s January 5th meeting with the leader of the Oath Keepers – without anyone having any idea that it was happening. Tarrio didn’t know it was coming, and didn’t appear to know he was even under investigation. Nor did Tarrio’s associates, friends, or anyone else who might have been in a position to tip him off – or blab to the media about what the DOJ was trying to do behind the scenes.
The DOJ managed to carry out this criminal probe against Tarrio from start to finish, in total secrecy, without anyone having any idea it was happening. So much for the popular pundit narrative that Donald Trump and his various Trump world associates can’t possibly be under DOJ criminal investigation, because if they were, it certainly would have leaked out by now.
No, this DOJ – the one run by former Judge Merrick Garland – is running the tightest ship of all time. It keeps proving, first with the double digit number of Oath Keepers leaders who were indicted and arrested, and now with the Proud Boys leader, that it can in fact operate in total secrecy. The pundits who keep telling us they’d bet money that there’s no DOJ case against Trump, are the same pundits who 24 hours ago would have told us they’d bet money there was no DOJ case against Enrique Tarrio either.
Last week Roger Stone’s Oath Keeper driver cut a cooperating plea deal for seditious conspiracy. This means, by rule, that he’s already given up everything he has on everyone he knows, including Stone. Roger Stone is going down; that’s how cooperating plea deals work. And Stone doesn’t appear to be the only one.
We already know that Rudy Giuliani is under DOJ criminal investigation, as tipped off by the raid of his home and the subsequent long running court battle over whether the seized evidence was protected by privilege (which the DOJ only recently mostly won). The DOJ has criminally indicted Steve Bannon for contempt, who’s out on bail awaiting trial, and the text of his contempt indictment suggests it was lifted from a much broader ongoing criminal case against Bannon. And the most logical explanation for the ongoing delay in acting on the Mark Meadows contempt referral is that it’s part of a more complex DOJ criminal case against him – or that he’s flipped already.
The bottom line is that Donald Trump and his people shouldn’t be sleeping well at night – or perhaps they should make sure they sleep in a suitable amount of clothing. The Garland DOJ keeps making a habit of indicting and arresting January 6th ringleaders who thought they’d gotten away with it all, due to the sheer secrecy of the criminal cases that were being built against them. Now that the DOJ has taken down the leaders of the hate groups that carried out the Capitol attack, the DOJ is surely moving on to the next ring of the hierarchy. And these kinds of criminal probes only ever move one direction: upward.
