The news that a grand jury is meeting to weigh criminal evidence against Donald Trump and his corporate compadres seems wonderful indeed. At first glance, anyway.

Lest we forget, the guy stands naked. He has no presidency to protect him from prosecution. No pardon powers. No Bill Barr to function as his Tom Hagen. No ability to fire the people who are pursuing him. No phalanx of criminal defense lawyers, because they’re not allowed in the grand jury room. No Supreme Court to shield his tax documents, because the court (including two of his appointees) has already ruled that he isn’t above the law. All told, he has no ability to control witnesses or events.

He’s raw meat for the New York prosecutors, who are digging deep into his business dealings and spotlighting potential financial crimes – including insurance fraud, tax evasion, grand larceny and scheming to defraud the banks. Basically, they’re working with a grand jury because they believe they now have sufficient evidence to seek indictments. They’re subpoenaing witnesses, locking in their testimony – and, most importantly, putting the squeeze on Allen Weisselberg, the top Trump finance official who knows what’s in the books, knows where the bodies are buried – and reputedly acted only after Trump himself had signed off. In the words of Trump biographer Tim O’Brien, “No one in that company did anything without (Trump’s) blessing, including his children. His children were petrified of crossing him or actually completing deals that he hadn’t blessed.”

But let’s not get too excited. We don’t want to wind up sprawled in the dirt like Charlie Brown – yet again – as Lucy yanks away the football.

As we learned long ago, Trump is more slippery than a greased pig. Proving that he knew about specific insurance fraud (inflating his assets) or tax fraud (minimizing his assets) may be difficult without sufficient documentary evidence – and, by all accounts, Trump didn’t even do email. He could claim that his accountants had assured him that everything was cool; he could claim that his lawyers had assured him that everything was legal – what’s known as an “advice of counsel” defense.

This consummate grifter has survived decades of scrutiny by always managing to blame somebody else. Will things finally be different this time? We’ll believe it when we see it.

One thing is certain, however. The political fallout will be fascinating. He’s already trying to spin the latest news as a yuge boost for a ’24 comeback. In his statement about the grand jury’s empanelment, he chanted his usual boilerplate (“the greatest witch hunt in American history”), but quickly noted: “Interesting that today a poll came out indicating I’m far in the lead for the Republican Presidential Primary…”

There you have it: Whereas he used to say that criminal probes didn’t matter because he was president, now he’s saying that criminal probes won’t matter because maybe he’s a candidate. Whereas the prosecutors can lock in all the witnesses they want, he’s basically saying that he can lock in the GOP if he wants – playing the role of martyr, a victim of a “rigged” “partisan” legal process, basically demanding that his captive saps re-nominate him despite the historic taint of an indictment. If he ultimately skates and only his underlings are jailed, he’d still be demanding that the party re-nominate the head of a proven criminal enterprise – as if Republicans care anymore about such trifles.

But hey. There’s always the chance that we’ll finally get the overdue opportunity to bump elbows with Lady Justice. As the Nobel Prize-winning cleric Desmond Tutu has told us, “Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.”