What today’s “Build the wall” mistrial means for the DOJ takedown of Trump world
The one defendant who went to trial in Steve Bannon’s “build the wall” scam managed to get a mistrial today, after one trial juror exhibited a bizarre pattern of behavior including allegedly sleeping through portions of the trial.
This defendant will surely be retried with a new jury, and will very likely be convicted. And two other people have already pleaded guilty in this scandal. The DOJ has also already indicted Bannon on a contempt charge that goes to trial next month, and will likely bring even more charges against him. So this is still going to be a big win for the DOJ, just an ugly and time consuming one.
Steps are normally taken to ensure that this kind of individual never makes it onto an important trial jury. It’s not clear why those steps weren’t taken in this trial, and why the judge didn’t intervene earlier and replace the rogue juror.
But this is why the DOJ has taken the time to build such comprehensive ironclad cases against Trump world before indicting them. That way no juror can just ignore the evidence, and even if it does happen, there are enough charges in place against that individual to provide insurance against any one charge falling through.
It’s why the DOJ just hit the Proud Boys leaders with ten new charges each yesterday, on top of the charges that had already been brought. It has to be that massive of a criminal case to make it jury proof – which, by all accounts, is precisely what the DOJ is working on when it comes to Trump world. It takes longer than anyone would like to build such massive cases, but it’s better than a mistrial or acquittal.
