Indictments imminent? Turns out Jared Kushner testified to Jack Smith’s Trump 1/6 grand jury a month ago
Jared Kushner testified to Jack Smith’s 1/6 grand jury last month, per the NY Times. This tells us some things about how the Trump 1/6 indictment is shaping up, how ugly it’s likely to be, and how close indictments are to happening.
First, it helps confirm that Jack Smith has indeed landed the big witnesses he wanted. This is not a surprise. If you witness a crime that you did not participate in, you are legally obligated to testify about it to a grand jury when asked. You don’t get to “decide” whether to testify. You cannot use the Fifth Amendment. And if others have already testified, you can’t just lie or pretend you don’t remember, without putting yourself in legal peril. It really is roughly as simple as everyone who’s not a target in any given probe has to testify to the grand jury. Kushner may or may not be a target in other criminal probes, but he’s not a target in the 1/6 probe, so he had to testify about what he witnessed.
Second, Kushner testified a month ago, and it’s just coming out now. It’s a reminder that prosecutors can sometimes manage to sneak witnesses into the courthouse without the staked out media spotting them. We’ll likely end up being shocked at who all has testified against Trump.
Third, grand jury witnesses generally testify in order of importance, from lowest to highest. If big fish like Kushner testified a month ago, then we must truly be at the end of the process by now.
Fourth, it’s a big deal that this information is now coming out. Very few people would have known that Kushner testified, even fewer would have known the nature of his testimony, and even fewer would be legally allowed to tell the media about it. Yet one of them woke up today and decided to tell the media that Kushner testified against Trump a month ago. There’s always a reason someone decides to give a secret to the media after the fact.
Most importantly, this NYT article tries to spin Kushner’s grand jury testimony as having been vaguely pro-Trump. But that can’t be accurate. Prosecutors only put witnesses in front of a grand jury if they have an incriminating story to tell about the target.
Best guess would be that Kushner indeed gave Trump up to the grand jury, expects it to come out imminently once indictments drop, and is trying to get out ahead of it by giving the media the story by portraying himself as having vaguely protected Trump. That way Trump reads this version of events in the media and believes it, instead of believing whatever the indictment text ends up revealing about Kushner’s testimony.
In any case this is the latest sign that Jack Smith’s Trump 1/6 probe appears to already be done, and that the grand jury may now be in the process of bringing indictments. Politico says that one of Smith’s top prosecutors was at the courthouse today. Yet, just as was the case on Tuesday, no one in the media has spotted any witnesses coming or going. At some point the only thing left for a grand jury to do is to indict.
