FMuch for the United States hinges on whether federal prosecutors indict a former president for the first time in its history. Evidence, thanks to new testimony always growing around of Donald Trump Efforts to undermine democracy and incite extremist supporters to violent attacks on the Capitol following his election defeat should have long pushed investigators to their limits.

Now some top secret documents are also being handled by Republicans, which he probably illegally took with him and did not hand over to the national archivists despite intense efforts and protests to the contrary. Aside from criminal offenses like high treason or rioting, which have stimulated the imagination of Trump opponents at least since the public hearings over the storming of the Capitol, this may seem secondary.

But the raids to secure the documents were also based, among other things, on the suspicion that the Espionage Act was violated. This is no small matter.

Garland had to admit the worst

Perhaps even more than the federal attorney’s office and a grand jury, American society in the medium term depends on the conclusions of a “court of public opinion.” Can Trump’s 74 million November 2020 voters be persuaded that the law applies to the man he bulldozers into Washington and whose “deep state” distrust of many citizens is shared?

Attorney General Garland must not have been surprised at how vigorously Trump played the victim card after the raid. He would have speculated that many Republicans would use this opportunity to undermine the credibility of his agency and even the FBI. In the America of 2022, he may also have considered the possibility that armed Trumpists would retaliate against the FBI, as was apparently done in Cincinnati.