Legal expert spells out the path to New York criminal indictments against Donald Trump and his kids
Now that the initial Trump Organization indictments have dropped, what’s next? New York Attorney General Tish James, who’s helping bring the case, says the criminal probe is “ongoing.” Michael Cohen, a cooperating witness who’s familiar with at least some of the evidence prosecutors have, says there’s much more to come. Now a legal expert is weighing in on how this could all land on Donald Trump’s head – and when.
The big clue continues to be that when the Manhattan District Attorney empaneled a grand jury a month ago for the specific purpose of bringing indictments, it was empaneled for the unusually long time period of six months. At the time, Palmer Report predicted that Allen Weisselberg would be indicted rather quickly, and then the case would build from there, with Trump himself being indicted at – if we had to guess – the four month mark out of six.
Now, law school professor Jennifer Taub has authored a piece for Washington Monthly in which she predicts superseding indictments by this “fall” (for reference, the first day of fall this year is September 22nd). She predicts that these indictments could include Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr, and Eric Trump. A few things stand out here.
First, Taub appears to be aligned with our gut feeling that Donald Trump’s indictment is most likely to come at around the four month mark. If prosecutors expected to need a full six months, they’d have emapaneled it for longer than that; empaneling it for six months probably means that they think they’ll need four months, and they made it six months in case things get dragged out.
Second, Taub is predicting that at least two of Donald Trump’s kids could be indicted alongside him. We’ve been wondering aloud how prosecutors would go about indicting the Trump family, and in what order they’d do so. If Taub is correct, we’d guess that the kids will be offered leniency or immunity in exchange for flipping on their father. Mary Trump said on MSNBC last night that she suspects they’ll take such a deal if it’s their only option.
Third, Taub spells out in detail why the Trump Organization indictment subtly but unmistakably lays the groundwork for criminally charging Donald Trump – particularly the parts of the indictment which detail specific criminal acts that only Trump himself could have signed off on. It’s worth a read.
