Fast forward to the ending

Based on the limited, possibly out of context, and for all we know not necessarily even correct details that have begun leaking out to the media each day about Jack Smith’s espionage case against Donald Trump, I now find myself constantly revising my best working theory as to how it might all fit together. And I’ve got to tell you, it’s becoming a bit exhausting.

I don’t mean that in a bad way. This is what I do. I follow this stuff because I’m trying to piece together what’s going on, because it’s important, because it matters. But at this point it’s like being 115 minutes into a massively complicated two hour mystery movie, and trying to keep track of every winding plot thread while trying to make an educated guess about what the ending will look like.

Actually, there is one fundamental difference. We already know, in broad strokes at least, the ending: Jack Smith will soon indict Donald Trump on charges involving the Espionage Act. The indictment won’t cause Trump to instantly fall through a trap door, but it’ll set off a chain reaction that’ll quickly begin to cause Trump and his sham campaign to fall apart at the seams.

But even with knowing the ending in advance, what’s a bit maddening right now is not knowing how all these various moving parts will fit into the ending. We still don’t know if Trump will be indicted for espionage first and all the January 6th stuff later, or if it’ll hit all at once. We don’t have a clear indication of who else will be indicted besides Trump. We don’t know if Jack Smith has already recovered the Iran-related classified document that Trump was caught on tape discussing. Nor do we know precisely who led Smith to that tape. We don’t know if it came from Mark Meadows, because after all this time we still have no definitive indication as to whether Meadows has cut a deal.

And that’s how it’s meant to be. Federal criminal investigations are not meant for our entertainment. The pre-indictment stage is kept secret for good reason: if the targets and material witnesses don’t know how much the prosecutor knows, they’re in less of a position to try to play games, and more likely to come clean. That goes double for a criminal probe involving stolen classified intelligence. And of course this just happens to be by far the most important criminal probe in our nation’s history, meaning everything needs to be played all that much closer to the vest.

But I’ll tell you something: I’m ready for the ending. I think I already have a pretty good idea of how these various reported aspects of the case fit together, as do you. I’m now ready for Jack Smith to drop the indictment, so we can all find out what was really going on with these plotlines the whole time. I’m ready for those final five minutes of this mystery movie where it’s all revealed. And I’m ready to watch Trump leave the arena in handcuffs.