In one sense, it was breathtaking: the first ever indictment of a former president by the Department of Justice he once oversaw — and therefore the most important federal charge in U.S. history.
In another, it was expected. Once Donald Trump had received a formal target letter from the department, his fate was effectively sealed.
But that was only the latest in a series of recent signs that charges were inevitable. The months and years of questions about whether the Biden administration should or would indict the 45th and would-be next president — and whether the department would stay its hand for politics, the good of the republic or some other reason — were settled when Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith special counsel.
From that point on, the investigation of the former president’s retention of classified documents has followed the well-worn path that the federal government would tread for any defendant accused of behavior anywhere close to as brazen as Trump’s over the last two years. Smith pursued the case as he would have any other, and that led ineluctably to this week’s indictment.
Almost as unavoidably, it will also lead to the department urging a court to impose significant prison time on the former president if he is convicted. Trump’s last chance to try to bargain for less grave charges came and went in his lawyers’ last meeting with Justice officials on Monday. Now he is in the unenviable position of any other defendant charged with serious crimes.