Looks like Jack Smith has Donald Trump nailed for wire fraud on top of everything else
On Thursday, Mike Pence testified against Donald Trump to Jack Smith’s DOJ grand jury. Pence is the highest ranking (and quite possibly the final) witness in Smith’s criminal case against Trump. It means we’re close to seeing an indictment. The real question is what charges will be involved.
The fact that Evan Corcoran testified to the grand jury makes it pretty clear that Trump will be charged under the Espionage Act in his classified documents scandal. And the fact that Mike Pence testified to the grand jury makes it pretty clear that Trump will be charged in relation to January 6th. But there have been persistent reports that Jack Smith has also been investigating Trump’s post-2020 fundraising, and now it sounds like he’s hit pay dirt.
The New York Times is reporting that Jack Smith has zeroed in on the quarter billion dollars that Donald Trump and his co-conspirators raised by claiming that the 2020 election had been stolen from them. Significant proof has since emerged that Trump and many of his people knew at the time that the election hadn’t been stolen, which means they committed wire fraud by raising that money under false pretenses.
With election tampering, incitement, obstruction of justice, and Espionage Act charges already in the mix, does Jack Smith really need to add wire fraud charges against Trump as well? The answer is yes. The point of bringing wire fraud charges alongside all the other charges is that it acts as an insurance policy. Even if the trial jury isn’t willing to take a leap on the bigger and more complex charges, the jury should certainly convict on something like wire fraud, where the proof is right there on paper. Even if the jury were to only convict Trump on wire fraud and acquit him on all the other charges, that alone would put him in prison for up to twenty years.
