Trump’s use of all caps, his reference to “crooked Hillary,” and the obligatory claim of “witch hunt” will almost certainly be enough to satisfy Trump’s base and a goodly number of other Republicans that the former president is the aggrieved party in this matter. But if the indictment is for obstruction of justice, and not for possessing documents, then his rant is beside the point.

What the rant ignores is that in the instances Trump cites, neither Joe Biden, Bill Clinton, nor Hillary Clinton defied a subpoena — much less lied to their lawyers about the whereabouts of subpoenaed documents or shifted documents from room-to-room to evade production.

Reports suggest that Trump did all of these things (or had them done on his behalf). If the reports are true, then Trump likely obstructed justice and the misconduct Trump cites by others has little or no relevance to the case against him.

Andy McCarthy states a different, more plausible, case that an obstruction of justice indictment would give Trump “a strong political argument to make about our two-tiered justice system.”

[This was my reaction as well. The discovery of classified material at Biden’s residences, some going back to his Senate days — when he had no custodial authority at all — makes it all but certain that Jack Smith will avoid the conflict that would arise if he charged Trump under the Espionage Act. As Paul explains, a case for an indictment on obstruction is pretty solid at this point and unencumbered from serious allegations of selective prosecution. But that doesn’t make it a slam dunk either. — Ed]