What about the rest?
If you add up all the statutory maximum prison sentences Donald Trump could incur for all four of his current indictments, the tally comes to a whopping 717.5 years in prison. Obviously Trump can’t afford to draw one percent of that maximum, that is, 7 + years, let alone the absurdly long 717.5 years. At his age any sentence involving any years at all is going to be life-altering. Any sentence involving more than five years is an effective life sentence.
Thus have a number of things been made clear to us since January of this year. The first is that Trump can and almost certainly will go to prison. The second is that Trump will probably die there.
Shocking as the year’s revelations have been thus far, there’s one more that ought to be universally apparent but clearly is not. Jack Smith and his team have operated with clandestine efficiency. We didn’t see Trump’s two federal indictments coming until they hit us like a sudden train wreck. The message ought to therefore be clear. No one is safe. Something tells me that indictments for the January 6th insurrection are far from over.
All of which could mean that the complexion of the 2024 election could be very different from what we expect it to be. Right now we expect certain evil players to turn up. But what if they can’t?
It’s already clear that Loren Boebert, who retained her Congressional seat in 2022 with a measly 546 votes, is effectively gone. Her arrogance and shamefully revelatory behaviour at the Beetlejuice performance in Denver has all but sealed her fate.
But what of Congresspersons Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz, or Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley? Their seats are protected by the relative safety of staunchly red constituencies. But they won’t remain in them if they’re indicted, tried and found guilty of seditious conspiracy. I have a suspicion that they, and many others, will indeed be tried and found guilty.
Jack Smith hasn’t threatened them with anything. But Jack Smith doesn’t make threats. He takes devastating action. He strikes when you least expect it. He is the wind at night.
The January 6 insurrection has produced more indictments than any other crime in the history of the United States. Those indictments have rolled out uniformly and continuously ever since. It would be naive for us to think those indictments have suddenly stopped.
I don’t think they have. We’ve seen the foot soldiers indicted first. Many of us bitterly complained that the grunts were indicted while their generals went free. Then their leaders were indicted, putting a stop to that complaint.
So now we have seen the high level planners and plotters from inside the White House have been indicted. The next logical group ought to be the periphery, those people who were involved but were outside the Oval Office, people like Greene and Gaetz and Cruz and Graham. Don’t be surprised if they’re next.
The sudden, out-of-the-blue indictment of Democratic Senator Bob Menendez is a case in point. In most cases we will have very few clues that new indictments are on their way. And to those yet unindicted Trump loyalists still standing, I have only the chilling words of Charles Bukowski for them. It’s the ambulance you don’t hear, that one’s for you. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.