The end is near?
NRO's Andrew McCarthy thinks Trump will be indicted. I'll believe it when I see it.
As Donald Trump prepared to announce his 2024 Presidential run, Andrew “stop asking me about Less Than Zero” McCarthy of National Review Online thinks there’s a real chance he’ll be indict-
Yeah, I know, I’ll believe it when it finally happens. But a man can dream.
Trump has jumped the shark, as the kids used to say. His gratuitous attacks on two successful, popular Republican governors — both of whom, unlike him, could conceivably defeat President Biden or some other Democratic nominee in the 2024 election — have ended his chances of capturing the GOP presidential nomination two years from now. If the rant aimed at Florida’s Ron DeSantis wasn’t bizarre enough for you, the one launched at Virginia’s Glenn Youngkin was certain to be described as racist in our current age of hair-trigger sensitivity — though, for what it’s worth, I sense that the former president is losing his grip and that the racism charge assumes that more thought went into his “Young kin . . . Sounds Chinese, doesn’t it?” eruction than actually did.
As we discussed on the podcast, I’d already concluded that Trump had worn out his welcome. What was amusingly outrageous and boldly anti-conventional in 2015–16 is now just tired — more moronic than cringe-making because he long ago exhausted our capacity for cringing.
What does this have to do with his potential indictment, which is more a question of when than if at this point? Well, everything.
The Justice Department would prefer to make a January 6 case against Trump. Prosecutors are pushing in that direction, but it’s a tough case to make (the meanderings of California federal judge David O. Carter notwithstanding). They can’t tie Trump actionably to the violence of the riot, and they’ve already taken the position in other January 6 prosecutions that he was not a co-conspirator, just a pretext for a forcible attack that militia-type groups were already planning. That leaves the possibility of indicting him for obstruction of Congress and conspiracy to defraud the United States, but such charges would raise profound questions about whether the Justice Department was, in effect, criminalizing political speech and the far-fetched legal theories of John Eastman et al.
While that investigation marches on, though, Trump has given Democrats a gift: The Mar-a-Lago documents case, which arose due to bouts of gratuitous, self-destructive behavior similar to what we’ve seen the last couple of days, is a comparative slam dunk. That’s why a magistrate-judge authorized a warrant to search Mar-a-Lago upon finding probable cause that Trump had committed three felonies (mishandling classified information, conversion of government documents, and obstruction) — based on which the FBI conducted a search that yielded scads of incriminating documents, thereby making the case even stronger.
Given all of this, prosecutors are doubtless convinced that they have a case they could indict at any time. But they have also taken actions in recent weeks that underscore how serious they are about prosecuting the former president.
[…]
For all the vigor the Biden Justice Department is clearly pouring into the effort to build criminal cases against Trump, the administration would undoubtedly rather run against him.
These two possible outcomes are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Still, for as long as it appeared that the Republican presidential primaries would end in Trump’s routing the field, or at least remaining competitive to the end, the Biden administration had an incentive to table any Trump indictment. If the DOJ were to charge Trump while the Republican primaries were ongoing, that would give Republicans — all but the most delusional Trump cultists — the final push they needed to abandon Trump and turn to a different candidate, who could (and probably would) defeat Biden (or some other Democrat) in November 2024. Of course, once Trump had the nomination sewn up, the Biden administration could indict him at any time, whether before or after defeating him in the general election.
Just as this calculus motivates the Justice Department to delay any indictment, it provides a powerful incentive for Trump to run — and, indeed, to launch a campaign early (maybe as early as next week) so he is positioned to claim that a likely future indictment is just a politicized weaponization of law enforcement aimed at taking out Biden’s arch-enemy.
Yet, again, all of these calculations have hinged on one thing: Trump’s remaining a plausible Republican nominee. And he’s not one anymore.
Yeah, there’s the fatal flaw in McCarthy’s argument. Even after last week’s disappointing election results - as I write this, decision desks are calling the Arizona Governors’ race for Katie Hobbs, which I’m sure Kari Lake will accept with class and dignity - Trump still has at least a third and maybe as much as half of the party who’ve pledged their very souls to him.
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