I’ve lived through enough President Donald Trump-related freakouts over the years to have learned an important lesson: It’s usually wise to wait for the facts before rushing out definitive declarations. 

For example, when an indictment came down against John Bolton — a former Trump official turned Trump critic — accusations of retaliatory government thuggery came raining down.  But it turned out that the investigation into Bolton was initiated during the Biden administration, and that the government’s evidence appears to be strong. The initial conclusion that Trump was ticking down an enemies list in an effort to imprison his foes didn’t quite match the facts of the case, as was even admitted by the likes of Andrew Weissmann. Weissmann, for the uninitiated, was one of Robert Mueller’s top lieutenants in the “Russia collusion” investigation (which ultimately found no evidence of collusion), who has routinely offered decidedly anti-Trump legal analyses on left-leaning media outlets. Nevertheless, Weissmann told NPR that the case against Bolton was “stronger and more merited” than other prosecutions against figures such as James Comey or Letitia James, and struck him as “righteous.” That bout of enemies list shrieking, even according to some high-profile Trump opponents, was premature.