Say, doesn’t this sound familiar? One almost gets a sense of déja vu watching Donald Trump’s comments immediately following his arraignment in federal court yesterday.

Trump promised the crowd that he would appoint a “special prosecutor” to investigate “the entire Biden family,” and Joe Biden himself as the “most corrupt president” in US history. Trump then pledged to use the Department of Justice to go after “others involved in the destruction of our elections, our borders, and the country.” That’s quite an expansion on “lock her up” from seven years ago, no?

Fox’s Brian Kilmeade also gets a sense of déja vu, recalling correctly that Trump didn’t follow through with Hillary Clinton despite her commission of similar 18 USC 793 crimes and the sourcing of the hoax dossier that started Operation Crossfire Hurricane:

This time it’s different will be the response. Is it? It might be, but Trump also promised to “destroy the deep state” seven years ago too as he did again last night, and did next to nothing about it over his four-year term in office. He didn’t eliminate one major agency, and didn’t even cull out political appointees from the previous administration. Not even, as it turns out, from the Department of Justice.

It might be different this time, but not because of Trump. Several Senate Republicans demanded late yesterday that Merrick Garland appoint a special counsel to consolidate the various investigations into the Bidens. The argument is that the DoJ is already too politicized to be trusted to investigate its own chief executive and his family. Garland may have little choice but to agree — and may want this more than Republicans do:

Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), JD Vance (R-Ohio) and Mike Braun (R-Ind.) signed the letter a day after Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) revealed that the Ukrainian businessman who allegedly paid $5 million apiece to Joe and Hunter Biden in 2015 and 2016 claimed to keep 17 audio recordings of the president and first son as “insurance.”

“The outstanding allegations of potential corruption and wrongdoing on the part of multiple members of the Biden family are deeply concerning, to say the least,” the four senators wrote to Garland, specifically mentioning the alleged bribes on behalf of Burisma Holdings owner Mykola Zlochevsky, as well as the first family’s Chinese business dealings.

“Given these concerning allegations that continue to come to light with each passing day, we urge you to appoint a special counsel to investigate any wrongdoing by President Biden and his family in their business dealings,” the senators wrote.

Not only might Garland grudgingly agree, he might do so enthusiastically. As I wrote in my comment to this story in Headlines last night, a special counsel has traditionally acted as the best way to bury potentially embarrassing issues for years, if not permanently. Jonathan Turley has already pointed out that no one’s heard from Robert Hur for months, who’s supposedly investigating Joe Biden for alleged 18 USC 793 violations similar to those for which Trump was arraigned yesterday. Jack Smith was a rare instance of a special counsel actually charging the primary investigatory target with crimes on the core investigation, as opposed to only charging process crimes targeting underlings and tangential figures.

Appointing a special counsel allows the AG and the administration a certain distance from the probe. By choosing a special counsel themselves, Biden and Garland can make sure that it’s run by someone of their choosing, and not Republicans. It also allows the investigation to go moribund without much notice, and it also would force these same Republicans to stop demanding answers from Biden and Garland, at least for a few months, in deference to the special counsel they demanded. The media would love that, as they have spent the last three years trying to bury the story, drafting social-media platforms into service to outright suppress these stories in the last presidential election and for months afterward.

This demand is practically an explicit example of a briar-patch strategy for the White House. Even if Biden’s too dumb to realize it, Garland will recognize the opportunity, just as he did in the Biden classified-material probe.

Finally, Trump made clear last night that Republican voters will have to choose between vengeance and reform of the Department of Justice in the next election. Trump isn’t planning to depoliticize the DoJ; he’s openly campaigning on exploiting it for political purposes against his opponents and perceived enemies. Not only is this likely to fail even if Trump gets elected, but it’s likely to create an even bigger DoJ backlash against him than in his presidential term.

We can choose that, or we can choose reform that eliminates yet another cycle of vendetta. If you want the rule of law to prevail rather than the rule of power, you have to defeat Joe Biden first. And then you need a candidate who not only can defeat Biden but is more motivated to reform the system rather than exploit it for himself.

Ron DeSantis has floated a generalized plan to restructure, relocate, and restrict the activities of both the DoJ and FBI; presumably other GOP presidential hopefuls will come up with their own plans for DoJ reform, and may come up with even better ideas. That would proscribe revenge as the authority for politicized direction would disappear, but it would also (if successful) go a long way to eliminating the most dangerous part of the “deep state.” It might not be as emotionally satisfying, but it would actually solve the problem and benefit more people than just those named Trump. It would decisively end the vendetta cycle that is currently tearing the country apart, and which might succeed in doing so permanently if continued for another four years.

The choice in this case comes down to whether we cast our votes about the future of the country or the past grievances of Trump. Trump made the argument for the latter last night; we’ll see how compelling that is when people have to finally cast ballots or organize for caucuses.