As I sit here in the peanut gallery far from Ground Zero in the Donald Trump investigation hotbed, I find myself thinking about the options that await the former president of the United States.
Only one of them looks good and at this moment it appears to be the farthest from taking shape.
Attorney General Merrick Garland is among those who are trying to determine whether to indict the ex-president on criminal charges. We also have the Fulton County (Ga.) district attorney looking into allegations of vote tampering and the New York state AG examining whether Trump’s business committed crimes. Oh, and then we have the House of Reps’ select committee examining whether Trump broke the law by inciting the mob of traitors to storm the Capitol on 1/6 and seek to stop the certification of the 2020 election … that Trump lost to Joseph R. Biden Jr.
There’s nothing cast in stone that says Garland must indict Trump on anything, let alone on the most serious charges he might be considering. The AG could determine there isn’t enough to send Trump to prison for the rest of his life, so he might decide to pursue lesser charges.
Then the DA in Fulton County, Fani Willis, also might determine that Trump didn’t really seek to interfere with the election by demanding that the state “find” enough votes to put him over the top.
New York AG Letitia James also could find that she doesn’t have the goods on Trump’s business, even though his chief financial officer has pleaded guilty to tax fraud and is awaiting a sentence.
And what about the House panel? The committee has compiled a mountain of evidence that suggests everything from inciting insurrection and dereliction of duty on 1/6. The testimony we have heard has been stunning in the extreme!
But you see, Trump is facing a mounting array of legal challenges … even as he supposedly ponders whether to run for the presidency yet again in 2024. My strong sense is that one of those challenges is going to fall hard on The Donald.
The least likely option would be for none of these probes to produce a formal criminal charge against the former president. I understand fully the gravity of taking such a step. I also grasp the blowback that would occur from the cultists out there who continue to excuse the ex-POTUS’s conduct at all levels in the period after the 2020 election.
It just occurs to me that the very last person on this Earth I would want to be is Donald John Trump.