Indictment watch: Episode three
Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC just reported that the legal team for Defendant Trump is making preparations for his possible indictment on federal charges in Washington D.C. as early as tomorrow. O’Donnell pointed out that he wasn’t reporting that Defendant Trump will be indicted tomorrow, only that his legal teams is acting as if he will be.
Andrew Weissmann, former chief of the fraud division for the Department of Justice, who was a guest on the show at the time O’Donnell made his report, said that with everything else that has happened to Defendant Trump lately, including two previous indictments, one on state charges in New York City and one on federal charges in the classified documents case in Florida, any lawyer working for Defendant Trump would be remiss in doing his job if he wasn’t actively preparing for Special Counsel Jack Smith to indict him on charges of attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Weissmann also explained that suspected criminals are not given notification in advance of their indictments because the grand jury indicts the target of the investigation by voting what charges to bring and issuing a true bill to prosecutors, who then announce the indictment and the charges. Prosecutors may know that a grand jury is to be in session, say, tomorrow, but until they are handed a true bill by the grand jury, they do not have an indictment in hand and thus cannot warn a target in advance that he or she has been indicted and on what charges.
So tomorrow it may be, or not be. That is the question.
Stay tuned.
Let's wait and see how this plays out. I can easily see how Jack Smith laying a tiger-size deadfall trap for Trump in plain sight by imposing pretrial restrictions on Trump's penchant for litigating his defensive in front of cheering crowds. Placing a gag order on Trump as a condition of bail is an irresistible lure that Trump will leap at in a paroxysm of rage and claim of being victimized by the Deep State. Ventilating in a public forum would violate the gag order, resulting in an immediate court filing for arrest and incarceration. Trump will have been told that he may not engage in witness tampering or attempting to influence potential jurors. He cannot do otherwise. And that will break him. No jailhouse interviews. No public statements. Out of the public eye, Trump will wilt and shrivel. He'll rot on the vine, and he'll have to endure the run-up to trial while in jail.
So have you had a miraculous recovery from the vaccination reaction, or are you typing with your toes? At least no one can say you're doggin' it.