Special Counsel Jack Smith Prepares For Hot Indictment Summer
More indictments! More venues! More witnesses!
(Photo by Tom Brenner for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
There’s a cacophony of news this week about Donald Trump’s legal jeopardy from Special Counsel Jack Smith’s twin investigations in the documents and January 6 cases. Just this afternoon, Andrew Feinberg of The Independent posted a barnburner predicting superseding indictments from the special counsel, spread over multiple jurisdictions.
Prosecutors are now prepared to “stack” an “additional 30 to 45 charges” on top of the 37-count indictment brought against Mr Trump on 8 June. They would do so using evidence against the ex-president that has not yet been publicly acknowledged by the department, including other recordings prosecutors have obtained which reveal Mr Trump making incriminating statements.
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Feinberg, who accurately anticipated the first indictments in the documents case three weeks ago, writes that former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has “signed an agreement with the Department of Justice which memorialises his obligations to cooperate with any prosecution against Mr Trump or others in the ex-president’s orbit in exchange for consideration that will spare him considerable legal jeopardy.” Meadows played a central role in every part of the January 6 scheme: pressuring Georgia elections officials to claw back Biden’s electors; assembling the slates of fake swing state electors in concert with the Trump campaign and having them submit fake electoral certificates; ordering the Justice Department to investigate false claims of election fraud; and then finally coordinating the speech on the Ellipse and subsequent march on the Capitol.
Feinberg also writes that “special counsel Jack Smith’s team is ready to bring charges against several of the attorneys who have worked for Mr Trump.”
Earlier this week, CNN and the New York Times reported that Giuliani and his attorney Robert Costello had participated in a proffer session with the Justice Department. Costello, a MAGAworld regular whose sage advice landed Steve Bannon with a contempt of Congress conviction, is apparently working his magic for Rudy as well. So it is perhaps not surprising to read that Rudy remains on the indictment list, even after his “Queen for a Day” appearance.
Earlier in the week, CNN released audio of one of the incriminating recordings in the special counsel’s possession. In it, Trump and his aide Liz Harrington can be heard laughing with Meadows’s biographer and publisher about a classified document laying out General Mark Milley’s plan to attack Iran.
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“This was done by the military and given to me,” Trump blathered in the meeting at the former president’s New Jersey golf club. “See, as president I could have declassified it. Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”
“It’s so cool. I mean, it’s so, look, her and I, and you probably almost didn’t believe me, but now you believe me,” he went on, as papers can be heard shuffling in the background.
On Fox, Trump suggested that he never had the papers he was audibly waving around in the tape.
“There was no document. That was a massive amount of papers and everything else talking about Iran and other things,” he huffed. “And it may have been held up or may not, but that was not a document. I didn’t have a document, per se. There was nothing to declassify. These were newspaper stories, magazine stories and articles.”
Sure, Jan.
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Look for another such convincing declaration when audio of Trump showing a classified document to his Florida campaign manger Susie Wiles surfaces. (At this rate, it’ll be a miracle if we can publish this post before it leaks.)
In the meantime, the New York Times says the grand jury in Miami which indicted Trump has continued to drop subpoenas, and Feinberg reports that Smith’s prosecution will be instructed by Judge Aileen Cannon’s conduct in the already-filed indictment. If prosecutors find that she is giving “undue deference” to Trump — as indeed she did the last time the documents case was before her, before getting slapped down by the Eleventh Circuit — they’ll hedge their bets with indictments in more hospitable venues.
Pretty convenient that Trump gave them such a plethora of dockets to choose from!
Finally, Rolling Stone confirms that Trump looks forward to 2025, after he’s won reelection, and can be joyfully reunited with “his” precious documents.
Prosecutors are prepared to hit Trump and his allies with new charges, sources say [Independent]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics and appears on the Opening Arguments podcast.
