A not-very-surprising but still shocking new account in the Washington Post details how the Justice Department and the FBI’s “wariness about appearing partisan, institutional caution, and clashes over how much evidence was sufficient to investigate the actions of Trump and those around him all contributed” to the long delay in opening a criminal investigation into the Orange God Emperor and his minions for their post-2020 election coup attempt, a probe which didn’t really begin until April 2022 when the FBI began looking into the fake Trump 2020 electors scam.

The story is friggin sprawling and difficult to summarize other than to say that the pressure over public reporting of what happened behind the scenes and evidence uncovered by the House January 6th Select Committee investigation was in large part what broke the logjam and spurred the Justice Department to finally start moving against key players in the attempted coup, one that really picked up speed after Jack Smith was appointed to pursue Trump himself.

Yeah, people are going to be pretty frustrated over this, especially the part where DOJ leaders shot down the acting DC US Attorney’s February 2021 push to investigate Roger Stone’s meetings with the Oath Keepers leading up to the riot at the Willard Hotel and another prosecutor’s November 2021 effort to subpoena for info about Steve Bannon’s “war room” at the same place.

The year-plus delay was extremely costly as earlier action absolutely could’ve meant Trump would be on trial, maybe even convicted, by this point instead of unlikely to face a federal jury before the 2024 election. On the other hand, there are far too many known and unknown unknowns to clearly paint the present juncture as solely the result of Justice Department and FBI reluctance in what was a deeply vast and complex plot against American democracy. Evidence develops, people change their minds, the QAnon Shamans and Captain Moronis at the bottom of the pyramid and then the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers in the middle needed to be dealt with too. Most importantly we’re almost certainly talking about the late rather than the never. Be annoyed, but don’t go full black pill.