a) Gibbs is never arrested - the judge said there was a good chance of it happening, but it never happened
b) Vance and Gibbs basically agree not to fight by ‘the lawyer dudes’ rules - dirty info, political favors, etc - Vance destroys the report that the ‘lawyer dude’ was asking about to protect Gibbs since that is one of the few things (even tho it has nothing to do with his career @ NCIS) that actually hurts Gibbs. Gibbs destroys the box of files given to him by Franks which would apparently have some usefull info against ‘someone’. Both of those events are more to signify the two of them letting go of the past and moving on.
c) That happened just prior to the pact with Gibbs, was clearly meant to be a ‘cliffhanger’ for the audience, but also gave Vance some leverage to help squish the investigation
d) right - which we knew would eventually happen anyway
e) Clearly the target is whomever Fornell is protecting/transporting - but its classic cliffhanger misdirection - but it will fuel a storyline between Fornell/Gibbs (or maybe not, who knows)
Otherwise I agree with RikWriter- the whole season has been a headscratcher for this arc - but they have foreshadowed several times that ‘Gibbs actions would come back to haunt him’ when it came to certain things - so finally they do ‘something’ to make that happen.
My bigger question is how did the shooting of ‘dude from beginning of season that blew up the navy yard’ even get on the ‘lawyer dudes’ radar? that was sanctioned…