A lot of people on Twitter tonight are taking a victory lap, saying, “See! All you who doubted Merrick Garland…”

Not so fast. There was always a clock that we were up against, both the mid-terms and the 2024 election. Had the DOJ been more aggressive and investigated this more thoroughly earlier, DOJ would have had more time to litigate charges. We note this important point because if Trump were to be convicted of taking these important documents, he is ineligible to run for office. Just try to imagine how much Trump’s attorneys would try to drag out a charge.

But we also know that Garland wouldn’t sign off on an affidavit (Remember, a judge had to be convinced that the FBI would find evidence of a crime to sign the actual warrant) just to get some files back and prevent Trump from running for president (even though it’s a consequence). No. As Rachel Maddow just mentioned, the files Trump took to Mar-a-Lago were so sensitive that they couldn’t even be labeled. To label them would be to acknowledge their existence, perhaps something like (just a funny example) “Locations of Various UFO Crash Retrievals throughout the United States.” Obviously, the files didn’t concern anything of the sort, but they are files that cannot be described without giving them away, secrets so secret that Chuck Rosenberg mentioned that the U.S. had secrets that were akin to “the Crown Jewels,” and that there would be no reasonable explanation for Trump to possess some of the types of files he may have had.

Regular readers know that we have pounded on the fact that there is a case to be made that, depending upon what Trump took (the crown jewels, e.g. “United States military plans for a surprise attack in Eastern Europe,” or “Inventory and description of National Reconnassaince Organization Satellite network”), that taking them with the idea of selling them could be considered more traitorous than even J6th. It could, in effect, be like a person who walked into the CIA, got into the computer, stole the files of every Russian asset working for the United States, and offered them to Putin for protection. That would be treasonous on a level that rivals January 6th.

The media is missing the really, really big reason why the raid today is a potential blockbuster in American politics.👇 pic.twitter.com/3BdI9NA9Az

— Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) August 9, 2022

Regardless, a conviction on this prevents Trump from ever holding office again… which is why Garland should have started much earlier in his criminal investigations because two years is not enough time in the federal criminal justice system.

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[email protected], @JasonMiciak, with Nicole Hickman