Hollywood Elsewhere hopes and trusts that Merrick Garland and his team know what they’re doing — that they have the goods to take Trump down. Because if they don’t and Trump wiggles free and becomes the Republican Party nominee, he’ll lose the popular vote but wind up stealing the election with the help of all those regional MAGA stooges he helped get elected, etc.

Garland’s idea, as I understand it, is to prosecute Trump on a violation of some kind of governmental documents security thing and thereby legally block him from running in ‘24. Just like the feds got Al Capone on income tax evasion rather than bootlegging, racketeering and murder. Sam Donaldson mentioned the Capone strategy on CNN two days ago (8.14)

Let’s hope they make this happen effectively and inarguably, so that the Republicans don’t blah-blah their way around it at their convention.

Garland is in a very precarious and paradoxical situation: using the rule of law to fight a political party whose platform is that it no longer respects or believes in the rule of law.

There is reason for guarded optimism. I’m encouraged by the comments made by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in that 8.8. New Yorker piece, written by Susan B. Glasser and Peter Baker New Yorker piece. They’re military men (Mark Milley, James Mattis, et. al.) , and it’s clear that they understand the danger. The whole law-enforcement community does.

They all have one mission: to keep Trump from running. So if you ask me, going after Trump on this Al Capone level is a brilliant move.