Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes was just arrested and charged with 1/6 criminal conspiracy. So much for the DOJ doing "nothing." It's clear that the DOJ 1/6 probe is aggressively working its way up toward the top people involved, just as Merrick Garland recently said it was.
The real key here is that the charge is "seditious conspiracy."
Conspiracy charges allow prosecutors to keep charging upward, all the way to the very top of the criminal conspiracy, including the biggest fish who merely oversaw it and never physically committed the crimes.
Conspiracy charges allow prosecutors to keep charging upward, all the way to the very top of the criminal conspiracy, including the biggest fish who merely oversaw it and never physically committed the crimes.
This does not prove that the DOJ will charge Trump etc for 1/6. We're not there yet. But charging Oath Keepers leadership with seditious conspiracy sets the stage for charging people like Roger Stone with the same. And the next step after Stone would be Trump.
Prosecutors' ability to keep charging upward in a criminal conspiracy always depends on how strong the evidence remains as the charges work their way uphill. That's why you have to keep flipping people upward. You often need an inside witness to prove a kingpin was in on it.
The DOJ surely only made this case against Stewart Rhodes and his associates by getting someone directly under them to flip on them. Now the DOJ will try to flip one or more of these latest arrestees upward, against the next level up. But we're now at the top of the Oath Keepers.
This means the next step up the ladder will be to indict and arrest someone who was outside and above the Oath Keepers, giving the Oath Keepers orders. That's probably going to be a Trump associate. We're getting there.
You don't have to like how slowly this stuff moves. But if the DOJ had started by going directly after Trump and the people at the top, without the inside witnesses it's flipped, those cases against the people at the top would have failed. Trump etc would have gone free forever.
There is literally no other way to successfully take down the kingpins in a criminal conspiracy, other than to painstakingly work your way up like this.
"Be more aggressive" and "grow a spine" is just gibberish talk from pundits who think criminal prosecution is a reality show.
"Be more aggressive" and "grow a spine" is just gibberish talk from pundits who think criminal prosecution is a reality show.
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