It's finally happened. Former President Trump has been arrested. We've known since August when the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago that this was inevitable.

In September, I expressed why it was important for the DOJ to charge Trump before November 2022.

If the DOJ does bring charges after the 2022 election, the legal delays the Trump team will employ will likely extend the trial past the 2024 Republican Presidential Primaries. If he's ultimately found guilty after winning the Republican nomination, the DOJ will have created an enormous constitutional crisis.

Either way, waiting until the election to file charges is completely outrageous and insanely dangerous. If Trump is found guilty and made ineligible for a second, non-consecutive term as President, Republicans need to know this before the Primary. If Trump becomes the nominee and is made ineligible by a Democrat-controlled DOJ, the events of January 6, 2017 will seem mild in comparison to what's to come.

Trump certainly appears guilty, but the double standard compared to Hillary Clinton combined with the obvious political timing by Biden's DOJ, leaves it difficult to make this look like anything but a political witch hunt. Given the Democrats' recent history of political witch hunts and abuse of the legal system, it's difficult to have faith in what's happening now.

While the DOJ promised a quick trial, that's difficult to believe. They've brought 37 charges against the former President, each will have to be proven in court. Additionally, the Trump campaign is already using this to fundraise and grandstand, so they're going to drag this out as long as humanly possible. Their goal, as I stated it would be back in September, is to dominate the news cycle through the Primary and, if convicted, let it happen when he's the nominee.

The biggest problem here for Republicans is that, if the audio recordings of Trump admitting his guilt are real, the former President is in a LOT of trouble. While it's true that Hillary Clinton did the same thing, she at least made the effort to destroy the evidence and knew better than to gloat about it while knowingly being recorded. Donald Trump hoarded it, believing he was untouchable. Clinton should have been arrested and charged, too. This is absolutely true. However, if Hillary should have been arrested; then it stands to reason that Trump deserves to be arrested, too. Double standards or not, these are serious crimes against national security that Trump himself has allegedly confessed to.

In all honesty, Donald Trump should spend the rest of his life in prison (or at least house arrest) for his actions. The matter is complicated only by the fact that Hillary Clinton is not already behind bars. For years, I have implored Republicans to consistently hold themselves to their conservative values and the same standards that they hold Democrats to. You're seeing why I've feared that inconsistency now. The top Republican candidate in the 2024 Presidential Election has been found liable for rape and assault in a courtroom, married a Playboy model, cheated on her with a porn star, doesn't know how to cite a Bible verse, doesn't go to church, and has now apparently admitted on tape that he violated national security laws by stealing and mishandling classified information and sharing it with others. The man is rude to the point of being vile and has failed to help Republicans win elections in closely contested races because he's too busy creating controversy.

I'll be the first person to say that I loved Trump's Supreme Court picks and many of his domestic policies (I hated much of his foreign policy, including the abandonment of the Kurds). I'll even admit that he was the victim of a dark-state coup attempt, because the Russia "hoax" was a legitimate attempt to undermine the executive branch of government and remove a legitimately elected President from office by political allies of his opponents at multiple levels of the Federal Government. All of this being true does not mean that Donald Trump is a good person or that he's the best candidate to lead the Republican Party going forward. In fact, aside from Chris Christie and Rand Paul (because let's be serious - he's running), Trump is probably the worst candidate we have in the field. He has created a cult of personality around himself that is eerily similar to fascism and the only reason I'm not concerned is because Donald Trump is 77 years old and not long for this world. I have enough faith in our Republic that we could recover from such a tragedy if he were elected.

My point is that Donald Trump has compromised the integrity of the Republican Party to a breaking point. We now either support him through his trial and lose what integrity we had left once and for all, or accept it and demand justice for the crimes of Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, too. I do see a lot of Republicans hesitating to support Trump right now; which is a good sign that, even if the Republican Party suffers by following the will of the MAGA fringe, some conservatives will emerge with enough credibility left to be able to hold their heads up high when this is over and say, "See, I told you so."

The best case scenario for the Republican Party, the American People, and the rule of law is that Trump is found guilty of enough counts to prevent him from running for President and exiling him permanently participating in American politics in any kind of serious way.