Here’s thing about Fani Willis and Jack Smith not “coordinating”
All along we’ve all wondered aloud whether DOJ Special Counsel Jack Smith and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis were coordinating their prosecutorial efforts on some level. After all, they’re investigating different parts (and in some instances the same part) of a larger overall crime spree.
Yesterday Fani Willis gave a rather definitive answer to that question when she said in an interview that “I don’t know what Jack Smith is doing and Jack Smith doesn’t know what I’m doing.” Well okay then, that settles that. So much for the popular notion that Willis might be basing her state level RICO charges against Donald Trump on Smith’s federal charges.
But aside from that, this doesn’t really feel like a story. Prosecutors know how to bring criminal charges. They do it for a living. Nothing says they have to be holding hands while they’re doing it.
Willis publicly stated her indictment timeframe awhile back when she said that indictments could happen anytime during the month of August, and asked the courts to keep the second week of August open. By default this gave Smith the opportunity to set his timing accordingly. If he’s decided that he wants to bring his 2020 election charges before Willis brings hers, then he’ll indict Trump this week. If he doesn’t care about the timing, then he’ll do whatever he wants. And that’s really all the “coordination” they need.
Some are questioning why Fani Willis is making a point of announcing that she’s not coordinating with Jack Smith. Who knows? She has been building her case against Donald Trump for two years, putting her career and reputation on the line in the process, and perhaps she wants to make sure the public understands that her case is not just some spinoff of Jack Smith’s case. Or maybe Willis has seen that Trump is trying to spin up a talking point by insisting that all these various prosecutors are conspiring against him, and she decided to neuter his talking point.
In any case, it really doesn’t feel like much of a story. It maybe tells us a little bit about how Fani Willis is planning to bring her racketeering charges. It still doesn’t tell us much about Jack Smith’s timing. His January 6th grand jury usually meets on Tuesdays, so for all we know it could indict Trump today. Or not. We still have far more questions than answers when it comes to all of the various 2020 election related indictments. But we’ll have answers within maybe days or even hours. We’ll find out soon enough.
