Donald Trump is about to move one step closer to criminal indictment in New York
“Donald Trump will never be indicted or arrested because he hasn’t yet been indicted or arrested.” It’s a logical fallacy which reveals itself to be ridiculous once you scrutinize it – but it’s nonetheless being repeated quite a lot on social media these days by people who aren’t bothering to scrutinize it.
Meanwhile back in the real world, Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance has already criminally indicted the Trump Organization and Allen Weisselberg. More importantly, the grand jury is reportedly still hearing testimony, meaning more indictments are coming. But when? As it turns out, tomorrow is a major day in that process.
Vance is retiring, and it’s previously been reported that before he leaves office, he intends to make a decision about indicting Donald Trump. Tomorrow, Alvin Bragg will be elected as the new Manhattan District Attorney. This is a big deal for a couple reasons.
First, Bragg is a Democrat who has made clear in interviews that he intends to let the criminal case against Trump continue to move forward – so there’s no magic wand escape hatch here for Trump. Second, Vance announced the indictments against Weisselberg and the Trump Organization just about a week after the primary election was held for Manhattan DA. If Vance has been doing it this way so as to not allow the indictments to politicize the elections, it stands to reason that he’s been waiting to announce Trump’s indictment until after tomorrow’s election.
That doesn’t mean the indictment will necessarily be announced the day after tomorrow. Vance could decide to wait a day, a week, you name it. But he leaves office at the end of this year, which is just two months from now – and the end of his tenure will coincide with the holidays, when political news falls on deaf ears.
So Vance realistically has a much shorter window than two months. And again, last time there was an election day in the Manhattan DA race, Vance announced Trump-related indictments a little more than a week later. So there’s every reason to at least cautiously expect that Donald Trump could be criminally indicted by next week.
Sure, the notion of Trump being indicted and arrested is completely at odds with the doomsday “Trump has gotten away with it all” narrative that the media keeps pushing. But that’s because the media has been almost entirely focused on the (supposed) lack of a federal criminal probe into Trump, while ignoring the active New York criminal probe into Trump.
If Donald Trump is indicted sometime next month, the media will treat it as a “shocking” development that no one saw coming. But in reality, if you’ve been following the news coming out of Manhattan this year, it’s been clear all along that Trump was on his way to indictment on the kinds of straightforward financial charges that nearly always result in conviction.
