Wednesday open thread: Is you taking notes on a criminal f*cking conspiracy?

Well, yesterday two big shoes dropped.

First, the New York Times reported this:

SCOOP: @lukebroadwater and I reviewed dozens of emails between Trump campaign officials and lawyers, including one in which a lawyer described the slates of electors they were putting together as “fake” https://t.co/P36lgMtFuA

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) July 26, 2022

Previously undisclosed emails provide an inside look at the increasingly desperate and often slapdash efforts by advisers to President Donald J. Trump to reverse his election defeat in the weeks before the Jan. 6 attack, including acknowledgments that a key element of their plan was of dubious legality and lived up to its billing as “fake.”

So, yes. They knew this scheme was illegal, they knew that it wouldn't work, but they hoped to sow chaos.

Then, the Washington Post confirmed what those of us who have eyes to see and ears to hear already, as the kids say, been knew:

Breaking news: The Justice Department is investigating President Donald Trump’s actions as part of its criminal probe of efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, according to four people familiar with the matter. https://t.co/mcjN3EhmAO pic.twitter.com/uqIlRgEhcK

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) July 26, 2022

I mean, one doesn't carry out search warrants on the likes of John Eastman without the aim being to target Trump. But many people on the left just loved to tear out their hair and rend their garments because the Department of Justice under Merrick Garland didn't leak and give them blow by blow accounts of what they were doing. Yes, what Trump did was unprecedented. This is precisely why you must be above reproach, as Caesar's wife, when going after the perpetrators, including a former so-called president.

But back to the first story.

These are not geniuses. These are not evil savants who will bring down American and world democracy. These are bumbling fools who gambled that they could pull off a coup with no real institutional support: not from the military, not from the security agencies. All they had was a mob, which was doomed to get crushed by the Guard and DC police. They gambled, and they lost. And they left behind a trail of evidence which will now seal their fate, from the lowliest insurrectionist up to their orange messiah.

Of course, the thing which gripes my ass, as the kids say, has been the assumption that because the investigation into January 6th hasn't unfolded like a police procedural and been wrapped up in 60 minutes that Merrick Garland was going to let the lot of them skate. This is a man who put a needle in Timothy McVeigh's arm. The last thing he is is a coward. But what he knows is that the investigation he is carrying out, again, has to be perfect to send a former president to prison. If he manages to pull that off, this country will owe him a debt of gratitude, and many will owe him an apology.

So now we wait some more. Unlike the Manhattan DA, Garland isn't afraid. Neither should we be.