This is all in the past tense now
On Tuesday it was reported that Donald Trump and/or his team told attorney Evan Corcoran to avoid searching Trump’s office and then tell the DOJ that it had been searched. This was presented as if it were something new – and it was, to us. But Jack Smith long ago won a court battle to have Corcoran give precisely this kind of testimony to the grand jury – which he did, months ago. This “new” revelation is certainly not news to any of them.
Last week it was reported that Jack Smith had subpoenaed Trump’s financial connections to several nations going back to 2017. This was widely perceived to be something that had just happened. But if you read the fine print of the original reporting, you discovered that the subpoena was actually issued at some point in the past – meaning the process has likely already mostly or fully played out by now.
This is now becoming a theme. The media belatedly gets ahold of some older detail of Jack Smith’s Trump probe, and duly reports it. Then everyone reacts to it as if it’s something that’s just now happening, or assumes that it’s something Jack Smith didn’t know about until he read about it in the news.
But in reality, every “new” detail that’s been reported over the past several weeks has actually been something from the past. That’s because this probe is basically complete. By all accounts the classified documents probe is complete, and has been for a little while. The grand jury in that probe reportedly hasn’t met in weeks, suggesting it’s already completed its work. This means it’s possible the grand jury has already indicted Trump under seal, and Smith is just waiting for his parallel January 6th Trump probe to be completed. By the way, that probe appears to be nearly complete.
It continues to be intriguing that so many of these older details about this probe are now coming out in such rapid fashion. Remember, the media doesn’t find out about these things by magic, or just by wanting it badly enough. People on the inside of these kinds of probes have to choose to give these details to the media, and always for a strategic reason. These belated leaks could be anything from Jack Smith trying to scare Trump’s people into flipping before indictments drop, to Trump’s people trying to shift the blame toward each other.
But let’s keep in mind that we’re now basically watching all of this on a delay. Each day we’re learning “new” things about Jack Smith’s Donald Trump probe that aren’t new at all; they’re just new to us. It’s what happens at the very end, once a secretive criminal probe is basically done. It’ll all come out on indictment day, and everyone is simply trying to position themselves for when that day soon arrives. Bring it on.
