AL CAPONE’S MURDEROUS gangsterism in Chicago in the 1920s wasn’t stopped by investigating the killings he ordered or the river of rum he sold during Prohibition, but by a patient federal investigation into his failure to pay income taxes on all of his illicit gains.
Donald Trump has
yet to face criminal charges for his efforts to incite a violent coup against the United States government. But Monday’s unprecedented FBI search of Trump’s Florida home appears to be part of a criminal investigation into his removal — a better word might be theft — of classified documents after he left the White House.
So instead of being charged as a violent insurrectionist bent on
destroying American democracy, Donald Trump may go to jail for a much more mundane reason: He pissed off the nerds at the National Archives, the legal custodians of the missing documents, who then tipped off the Justice Department.