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This shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone, but federal prosecutors informed the Trump legal team that he is a target of their investigation. DOJ Special Counsel Jack Smith assembled the indictment, which a grand jury could return later this week. Charges stem from the Mar-a-Lago documents case.
Notifying a potential defendant that they are the target of a criminal investigation generally precedes charges. Such a move also allows defense attorneys to meet with prosecutors. And indeed, three Trump attorneys — James Trusty, John Rowley and Lindsey Halligan — did meet with Smith on Monday. On Wednesday a federal grand jury in Miami continued to hear from witnesses, including Taylor Budowich, one of Trump’s former spokesmen. Former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows had also testified earlier, reported the New York Times. However, while liberal media are salivating over Meadows turning on his former boss, or getting some sort of plea deal, the Times didn’t speculate as to motive.
John Solomon, who runs the website Just The News, broke the story, but the NYT contacted Trump for comment. At first Trump said it was “not true,” but a short time later he posted at Truth Social, denying the claims:
No one has told me I’m being indicted, and I shouldn’t be because I’ve done NOTHING wrong, but I have assumed for years that I am a Target of the WEAPONIZED DOJ & FBI.
At NewsNation, attorney Dan Abrams had questions about the imminent indictment.
Former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy is also curious as to why there are two grand juries. As he bluntly stated in National Review:
The answer, as with most grand-jury questions is, we don’t know.
However, he continued:
I am an Occam’s Razor kinda guy. In that vein, I’d say convenience is the simplest explanation for why Smith is suddenly presenting witnesses before a grand jury in Palm Beach, Fla., when he and the Justice Department had been using one in Washington, D.C.
Moreover, McCarthy believes that the case should be in the Sunshine State, anyway:
The subject of the investigation is at Mar-a-Lago. The relevant documents were stored at Mar-a-Lago. The major June 2022 meeting, at which Trump’s lawyers allegedly misled the government about whether he had surrendered all the documents in his possession that bore classification markings, was at Mar-a-Lago. The FBI search was at Mar-a-Lago.
Ah, but therein lies the rub, to quote Shakespeare:
But of course, the Justice Department … wants the case to be centered in Washington, not Florida. In Washington, the jury pool is heavily anti-Trump ….
Florida is a red state where Trump lives, where the jury pool is apt to be more sympathetic to him …
But McCarthy raises yet another theory:
Some are speculating, for example, that perhaps Smith may be planning to bring charges in both Washington and Florida. There may, after all, be some crimes for which venue would not lie in Washington.
However, says McCarthy, it’s likely that Smith has added a grand jury in Florida for the convenience of the witnesses, and to end the investigation more quickly.
Yes, Joe Biden also had classified documents that he illegally stored. Plus, Hillary Clinton had intentionally destroyed digital files relating to her screw-ups with the Benghazi massacre. And these two, it appears, are getting away with their offenses, while Donald Trump will receive criminal charges.
Andrew McCarthy points out the differences in these situations.
First of all, as McCarthy wrote on Wednesday, since Trump has not yet been indicted, we can’t say for certain what the charges will be. But while Trump keeps his focus on his retention of national security documents, the real focus will probably be on obstruction:
Smith, the special counsel chosen by the Biden Justice Department, will do that in order to distinguish Trump from Biden, who has also illegally hoarded classified documents but whom the Biden DOJ obviously will not charge. The administration and the media-Democratic complex will stress that Biden cooperated with the government’s investigation of his mishandling of intelligence documents, while Trump obstructed the government’s investigation of his.
In other words, because Joe Biden cooperated, he won’t be charged. But Trump didn’t, and so he will be indicted on criminal charges. There’s also the fact that DOJ guidelines forbid the indicting a sitting president.
Plus, says McCarthy, there’s the issue of Biden’s age. If Biden does not win re-election, by 2025 he would be 83 years old, and even a Republican-run Justice Department wouldn’t want to prosecute an elderly man.
As for Hillary — she got off lucky, says McCarthy:
Her suspected crimes — for which she was indeed given a complete pass — included the intentional destruction of digital files that she and her advisers knew were relevant to a congressional investigation of the State Department’s missteps in connection with the Benghazi massacre (on September 11, 2012). Trump is right to stress her case, in which the Obama-Biden Justice Department worked to shield her from normal investigative measures and prosecution — whereas the Biden Justice Department is being extraordinarily aggressive in its pursuit of Trump.
Hillary reminds me of that song from the Geto Boys: Damn It Feels Good to Be a Gangsta.
John Solomon, in his breaking story on the impending Trump indictment, writes that Trump’s legal team had been anticipating that Jack Smith would be bringing charges, so they’ve been preparing a defense. According to sources who spoke to Solomon anonymously, they’ll argue that “the president had broad powers under the Constitution to keep documents or declassify without any fanfare documents from his presidency and take them with him upon leaving office.”
But if Smith attacks with obstruction of justice charges, as McCarthy speculates? The anonymous sources didn’t discuss that with Solomon.
Either way, any case against Donald Trump will cause havoc in the 2024 presidential election, writes Solomon:
No prior or sitting American president has ever been indicted in federal court, and if the grand jury accepts the prosecutors’ case it will touch off an unprecedented legal battle certain to work its way to the Supreme Court while lingering over the 2024 election in which Trump handily leads the GOP field by as many as 50 points in some polls.
Hold on tight. If you think political drama is at new heights now, wait until next year should Donald Trump go on trial.
Featured image: Hillel Steinberg/flickr/cropped/CC BY-ND 2.0.
Joe R. says: That’s their azzzzzz.
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