The Mueller investigation implied that our former president was guilty of obstruction of justice. Mueller’s final reported listed 10 times he may have committed that crime. But the Department of Justice doesn’t like to prosecute presidents. Nothing happened. For reasons unknown, in 2021, the new attorney general let the matter drop, even though the former president was now a private citizen.

Now, more than two years later, the Department of Justice has convinced a grand jury that private citizen Donald J. Trump has committed a new set of crimes. The grand jury’s indictment is entitled “United States of America v. Donald J. Trump and Waltine Nauta, Defendants” (Nauta is one of Trump’s employees).

An important thing to note is that this ex-official isn’t accused of doing anything when he was in office. He could have removed all kinds of sensitive material from the White House when he was still president (like others have done before him) and nothing would have happened except justifiable criticism for being loose with government secrets. But when he was no longer president, he was required to give it all back, like others have done. His crimes boil down to lying to the FBI about which documents he had, hiding them and refusing to give them back.

These are the specific felonies he’s charged with:

1. Willful Retention of National Defense Information (a section of the Espionage Act)
2. Conspiracy to Obstruct Justice
3. Withholding a Document or Record
4. Corruptly Concealing a Document or Record
5. Concealing a Document in a Federal Investigation
6. Scheme to Conceal
7. False Statements and Representations

They probably could have added another crime to the list, since he shared what he had with other people.

Note: There is absolutely no evidence that Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden or Mike Pence ever committed any of these crimes even though sensitive material was found in their possession at some point. (A major difference being that none of them refused to return anything or lied to the cops.)

Assuming the defendant pleads Not Guilty on Tuesday, it will be months before there’s a trial (assuming he doesn’t drop dead, lose his mind, change his plea, flee the country, etc. etc. in the meantime). In our judicial system, a “speedy trial” is hardly ever a quick one.

Although a biased, incompetent right-wing judge (Aileen “Loose” Cannon) will accept the defendant’s plea next week, it seems impossible that she will handle the rest of the case. Has a judge ever presided over a federal criminal case in which the defendant chose her to be a judge? No. It would be like a kennel club official deciding who’ll be the judge at a dog show and then entering her own dog in the contest.

Finally, the part of the indictment that mainly describes the movement and concealment  of boxes, which goes from page 17 to page 26, is kind of boring, but one of the things after that is very interesting. I don’t think anybody in the government knows if the defendant is still holding on to stuff he shouldn’t have. It’s also possible the prosecutors didn’t list the most sensitive documents he took (it would make the U.S. government’s ability to keep secrets look even worse). But take a look at the documents listed: