A couple of weeks ago, just after Trump announced his receipt of a target letter, I started a "Hey, it's Stupid" post to suggest a reason why the special counsel was putting this thing out now, and why none of the other conspiracy suspects seemed to be getting target letters of their own: to get as much of the material out to the public, preferably to hold the trial itself, before the election, so that voters would have every opportunity to factor it in to their November decision, and make it as simple as possible, with just the single defendant, putting his confederates on trial later in less of a hurry.
But I got stuck in some legalistic weeds and never wrote it; not having the indictment in hand yet, I couldn't hack my way out of an opening paragraph, and abandoned the thing. Now we do have the indictment, and it's not even Stupid any more. I think more or less everybody is clear that this is exactly what Garland and Smith have in mind, including the Trumpies—Donald himself keeps calling out "election interference" as if it was being directed from the Kremlin, or from a Justice Department stacked, as his people intend to stack it if he's reelected, with his personal supporters and sycophants under the terms of his so-called "Schedule F" order:
Mr. Vought and Mr. McEntee are involved in Project 2025, a $22 million presidential transition operation that is preparing policies, personnel lists and transition plans to recommend to any Republican who may win the 2024 election. The transition project, the scale of which is unprecedented in conservative politics, is led by the Heritage Foundation, a think tank that has shaped the personnel and policies of Republican administrations since the Reagan presidency.
It's funny how these Republicans enjoy complaining about the "weaponization" of government under the Biden administration even as they're laying out these elaborate prescriptions for how do do it—among Biden's first orders in office was the one rescinding Trump's Schedule F, literally depriving himself of the tools you'd need to reshape the federal civil service in your party's image.
