Exhausted yet? It is just six days since Donald Trump claimed he would be arrested on Tuesday, March 21. It feels like it’s been six years.
There never was a substantive basis to “Tuesday,” even Trump attributed it to “leaks” and his attorneys quickly walked it back. “Tuesday” never was a thing, though there were many reports that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg was moving towards an indictment.
Yet by pre-announcing that “Tuesday” was the day, Trump achieved what he wanted, media and legal chaos that put Bragg on his heels and — reportedly — has the grand jury put on ice for a few days. I explained Trump’s tactic in my interview on the Tony Katz show, which was quoted by the Washington Examiner:
“This is Trump’s attempt to stay any sort of actual prosecution,” William Jacobson, a Cornell Law professor and founder of Legal Insurrection, told conservative radio host Tony Katz this week.”This is his attempt to create a media firestorm, which he’s great at doing. … And to put pressure on the DA’s office not to go that last step, whether that will work — but that’s how I read it,” Jacobson added.On Thursday, reports emerged stating the grand jury overseeing Bragg’s investigation would not hear the Trump case, resulting in a delay of a potential indictment of the former president until at least next week.Meanwhile, the gap between Trump’s claims of being arrested and the present has left room for House Republicans to demand answers of Bragg, some of which have accused his investigation of being a political vendetta against a former president.In response to those lawmakers, Bragg was forced to address Trump’s incorrect indictment prediction as a “false expectation” of what was to come.
Unless there is something really substantive that has not been revealed, Bragg’s case against Trump is legally and factually weak.
But Bragg’s case is not the only criminal investigation. There’s the criminal investigation into J6 by Special Prosecutor Jack Smith. Mark Meadows and other Trump aides were just ordered to testify:
A federal judge has rejected former President Donald Trump’s claims of executive privilege and has ordered Mark Meadows and other former top aides to testify before a federal grand jury investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the election leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, multiple sources familiar with the matter tell ABC NewsMeadows, Trump’s former chief of staff, was subpoenaed along with the other former aides by Special counsel Jack Smith for testimony and documents related to the probe.
I don’t consider the J6 investigation a serious criminal threat to Trump unless there is some substantial evidence he knowingly and directly planned what turned into a riot (and also an otherwise peaceful protest). Trump’s public statements were just as constitutionally protected as anyone else’s, and at least publicly there was no clear incitement to violence.
There’s also the Georgia District Attorney looking into post-2020 election conduct by Trump. If based on Trump’s request to “find” more votes, that case would be weak since a reasonable intepretation of the words were Trump pushing state officials to find lawful votes that had not been counted yet, not to manufacture votes. The grand jury there has its own chaos, and the prosecutor is highly political, giving Trump a chance to play victim if and when some charges are brought.
The legal circus that will grow in the next year, however, does have a main ring. And that main ring is no joke. It’s the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case. Not so much that Trump had them, but whether he directed his lawyers to lie to the feds, obstructing justice. Unlike all the other legal drama, if proven, that’s a simple legal theory of criminal liability, unlike all the attenuated and legally-stretched theories in the other cases.
And again, Special Counsel Jack Smith is leading the way, and there are ominous signs based on the feds obtaining a ruling that Trump’s attorney had to testify under the “crime-fraud” exception to attorney-client privilege.
An attorney for former President Donald Trump testified for over three hours before a federal grand jury convened by special counsel Jack Smith, who is investigating the potential mishandling of documents with classified markings, according to two people familiar with the matter.Evan Corcoran was spotted in the federal courthouse in Washington, D.C., on Friday, ahead of his expected testimony, and made his way to the area of the building where grand juries hear testimony. These proceedings are sealed from public view under federal law.Prosecutors are interested in knowing more about Trump’s communications with Corcoran — who appeared before a grand jury once before and claimed attorney-client privilege — and planned to question him about notes and voice memos he was compelled to turn over, one of the sources said.A federal judge ruled Corcoran’s claims of attorney-client privilege over certain topics were invalid and compelled the lawyer to answer questions about aspects of his work with Trump and turn over evidence to investigators based on the “crime-fraud exception.”On Wednesday, an appeals court rejected the Trump team’s request that Corcoran’s testimony be put on hold to allow for further litigation. The appeal is still ongoing, however, and a briefing schedule stretches into the spring, but in the meantime, the court ruled Trump’s attorney would have to comply with a federal subpoena and sit before the grand jury on Friday.
Keep an eye on the Mar-a-Lago documents case. Bragg’s fiasco will help Trump because he will rightly be able to portray himself as a legal victim. Same in the J6 investigation and Georgia case. Not so Mar-a-Lago.
IF there is proof Trump instructed his lawyers to lie to the feds, something that remains to be seen but appears to be the claim, then the theory of criminal liability is simple, not likely to allow Trump to portray himself as a victim, and the Special Counsel cannot be played unlike the hapless Alvin Bragg.
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