Is today the day?
It’s been clear for a long time that the DOJ was going to end up criminally indicting Donald Trump in relation to January 6th and his attempt at overthrowing the 2020 election. It’s been clear for weeks that the indictment was coming fairly soon. And now Trump has helped us pin down the timeframe a bit by revealing that Jack Smith gave him until today to testify in his own defense. Trump has clearly not decided to do that, and now the timeframe is getting pinned down even more.
Jack Smith’s grand jury will be in session today, and according to CNN, it’s only planning on hearing from two quick final witnesses – with enough time left in the day to bring indictments against Trump. This doesn’t mean Trump will be indicted today. But now we know that today is definitely a realistic possibility.
We’ll see what happens. If Trump does get indicted today, he could well be informed about it at the end of the day, in which case he would likely announce it on social media. That’s what happened with his Espionage Act indictment. Or it could be that the media breaks the news, which is what happened with his Manhattan indictment.
That’s right, this will be Trump’s third criminal indictment (with a fourth on the way in Georgia). We’ll see if it ends up being today, or tomorrow, or whatever next day this grand jury is scheduled to meet. End stage indictment procedures take the amount of time that they take. It’s not something that can be precisely predicted from the outside. But we’re clearly in the thick of it now.
The importance of this particular indictment, in comparison to his other indictments, is something I’ll probably wait to fully tackle until the full extent of this indictment has been revealed. But this could end up being the Trump indictment that gets to trial first, gets Trump convicted first, and gets Trump sent to prison first – which would by default make it the most important indictment against him. Today could be the day that changes everything. Tick tock.
