here we go

pocochina:

anexplanationofunfortunateevents:

As
of Friday evening, special prosecutor Robert Mueller has officially
fired the first charges in the Trump-Russia investigation.

Quick civics refresher: a prosecutor can get an indictment if a grand jury thinks it’s more likely than not that a specific individual has broken the law. 

So here’s what you may be wondering about this one:

WHO:
The indictment has been sealed, so we won’t know until Monday at the earliest. We don’t even know if it’s one person or several
people.
You can get into the parlor game of who’s been told to expect charges, who’s confessed to solicitation on Twitter, who got themselves kicked off Twitter after a yoogely entertaining meltdown,
whatever. Pretty much the only person in Trump world we can rule out
is Trump himself, since it’s unclear whether he can be charged
while in office.
We’ll know when we know.  

IDGAF
WHICH ONE OF THEM IT IS! LOCK THEM UP! LOCK THEM UP!: I know, right?

WHAT:
The indictment has been sealed, so we won’t know until Monday at
the earliest. All we know for sure is the scope of Mueller’s
investigation, which is crimes related to the Russian sabotage of the
2016 election or any crimes his office comes across during that
investigation. It could be espionage or it could be tax evasion. The
most likely prediction seems to be that it’ll be one of the more
clear-cut cases against someone they think they can flip. We’ll know when we know.

WHY
NOW?: It doesn’t feel this way because Trump time is like dog years,
but in terms of large, complex criminal investigations, Mueller’s
is moving at warp speed. For historical context, the only thing we
can even remotely compare this to is the Watergate investigation,
where the special prosecutor was on the job for ten months before
bringing charges against anyone – and compared to this, Watergate really was just a third-rate
burglary. Think of how long it would take you to work through what we
know publicly about this case. The office is working as fast as they
can without screwing it up and now’s the time they think they can
prove at least one case beyond a reasonable doubt.

WHY
IS IT SEALED?: This is one of those things that probably
sounds more dramatic than it is. It’s not uncommon for defendants
to get the chance to turn themselves in before the charges are
announced publicly, or for law enforcement to want time to plan an
arrest that won’t turn into a circus without tipping off, say, a
wealthy defendant with connections abroad in time to flee the
country. Most dramatically and least likely – though at this point
we have to get used to thinking of this stuff as a possibility –
they might need to make arrangements to put a potential informant into
protective custody. 

DID
WE GET HIM? IS IT OVER?!: Sorry, no. This is, at best, the end of Act I. The
tipping point may be coming soon, but a lot can happen between now
and “soon.” You need to prepare yourself, because things can get
darker fast. Someone a whole lot more even-keeled than Trump would
panic with the walls closing in like this. Keep an eye on activist
groups like MoveOn and Indivisible in case we need to mobilize
quickly against an even more authoritarian turn. Firing Mueller,
pardoning everyone around him, a show trial of Hillary Clinton, war
with freaking Belgium – assume we’re going to have to put up a fight against something serious any day now.

The
regime did so much desperate covfefe-flinging last week that it looks
as if they had some sense this was coming soon, but even before this news dropped, there were quite a few
developments that they seem to have been trying to drown out over the
past few days:

Keep reading

today’s twitter meltdown was something else lol