Three criminal indictments and you’re Donald Trump
The manner in which we perceive any given criminal investigation to be swift, timely, or slow is fascinating. For instance, most folks consider Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to be moving quickly with her criminal probe against Donald Trump, while most folks consider the Department of Justice to be moving extremely slowly with its criminal probe against Trump. Yet these two probes started at around the same time and, best anyone can tell, are now on track to indict Trump at right around the same time.
Then there’s the Manhattan District Attorney’s criminal case against Trump, which he swore was still ongoing back when he declined last year to bring tax fraud charges against Trump personally. Sure enough, just as the DA said all along would be the case, he’s now presenting a criminal case against Trump to a grand jury for indictment.
And so here we are, with all three major criminal probes now gearing up to criminally indict Donald Trump within roughly the same timeframe – just with very different real or perceived routes for getting there.
The Fulton County DA is probably getting the most favorable reviews from onlookers because she’s been the most open about how her case is progressing. The Manhattan DA did himself no favors by failing to explain last year why he wasn’t indicting Trump at the time, and by allowing the perception to exist that he was simply afraid to go first. And the DOJ simply doesn’t care what anyone thinks while its cases are ongoing.
But the bottom line is that all three ships are now coming in. Donald Trump will soon be hit with three different sets of criminal charges in three different jurisdictions, along with three different criminal trials taking place later this year. The odds of him being fully acquitted in any one of these cases are low. The odds of him being fully acquitted in all three cases are infinitesimally low. Trump, who has never been indicted before and has thus never been put on criminal trial, is now about to face three strikes at once.
