Why the new DOJ filing suggests that a Trump indictment is coming

For some time, I’ve doubted the notion that the Justice Department is trying to make a case against Trump for mishandling classified information or illegal records retention based on the Mar-a-Lago search. But I’m less doubtful about the possibility of an obstruction case, because as I’ve explained:

If there is convincing proof of attempts to conceal or destroy government records, especially highly classified ones, that could change the equation. The Justice Department typically takes very seriously any tampering with witnesses or evidence. I am not saying the former president is guilty of such behavior — and again, we don’t know what the government represented to the court in this regard. But it might well be possible for the Justice Department to prosecute a narrow obstruction case without having to expose classified intelligence and the identities of, at least, most of its informants.

Now that we’ve seen more of the government’s proof in this regard, I believe former president Trump is likely to be charged with obstruction of justice and causing false statements to be made to investigators. It does not appear that those charges would be difficult to prove. Proving them does not involve navigating the same complications that would arise from trying to prove classified-information offenses. Just as critical, they involve conduct that would be very easy for the public to understand, and for which the average person would be indicted.

Trump apologists would surely counter that a not-so-average person named Hillary Clinton was not indicted for recklessly mishandling classified information, actually destroying thousands of government records, and making misleading statements (such as the laughable claim that she did not understand classified markings) in her FBI interview. Of course, the Biden Justice Department would not be very sympathetic to that analogy, and Trump would not exactly be arguing from a position of strength if his best defense were that someone else was not charged for comparably serious crimes. Trump’s better hope may be that he is more useful to Democrats as a badly compromised Republican presidential candidate than as a criminal defendant.