We’re officially on Trump indictment watch again
Multiple major media outlets have spent this week frantically pushing “DOJ let Trump off the January 6th hook” articles, as if the know they’re milking that particular narrative for the last time. And now House Republicans have spent today frantically trying to create distractions. It sure feels like they all expect the DOJ to indict Trump and his pals for January 6th any day now.
The media knows that once the DOJ indicts Trump for 1/6, it won’t be able to make “Merrick Garland is doing nothing” articles go viral anymore. And over the past few days the media has been frantically cranking out those kinds of articles, like a bartender during last call. It’s reaching a fevered pitch. This kind of trend usually ends up being a useful counter indicator for what’s actually going on.
House Republicans know that once Trump is indicted for 1/6, it’ll blow up their agenda. Even if they’re not indicted alongside him, they’ll still go through hell politically over it. And today they seem desperate to get any competing headlines out there they can come up with, if only so those headlines will compete for column inch space with the inevitable Trump 1/6 indictment headlines.
There’s no reason to expect that any of these people know when Trump is getting indicted. If the media had that kind of inside information, they’d be printing it. If Republicans had that kind of inside information, they’d be leaking it and spinning it.
But the actions of the media and the Republicans this week suggest that they’re looking at all the same things we are – final bits of grand jury testimony taking place, new leaks about Meadows supposedly having flipped, and so on – and they’ve concluded that the Trump 1/6 indictment could drop any day now. They’re getting out ahead of it today, because tomorrow could be too late.
That doesn’t mean Trump will be indicted tomorrow. It could still be a week or two way for all we know. We keep seeing that trying to pin down a precise date for a grand jury indictment is a fool’s game. But the point is that we’re now in the stage where it could come at any moment, and all the players are preparing for it to come at any moment. I said this on Monday, and today I’m even more certain of it: we’re now on Indictment Watch. Again.
