Major news out of Donald Trump criminal case in Fulton County
Even as Donald Trump’s Manhattan criminal indictment prepares to drop, there has been a remarkable lack of recent news out of Donald Trump’s Fulton County criminal case. I’m fond of pointing out that in a criminal case, a lack of recent news is not an indicator of a lack of recent process. It just means that whatever progress is being made of late, no one involved with the case has felt compelled to feed news of it to the media or the public.
But I also suspected that once the Manhattan indictment story reached its peak, something would surface out of Fulton County. Someone on one side or another would take the opportunity to fill the information vacuum in that case. Sure enough, we’re now getting news from both sides in Fulton County.
First, the uninteresting news: Donald Trump has filed in court to get the entire Fulton County special grand jury report thrown out in the grounds that it’s supposedly “unconstitutional.” Will it work? No. Will it even delay things? No. It feels like the kind of pointless move you make when you know you have no good options, but can’t convince yourself to sit there and do nothing.
Now for the really interesting news: Fulton County DA Fani Willis is indeed considering indicting Donald Trump and others for racketeering and conspiracy. Racketeering charges would go well beyond the core crime of election fraud, and would be based on the premise that Trump led an organized criminal conspiracy to profit from his election fraud scheme.
This is serious stuff. Racketeering is what you hit mob bosses with. Moreover, by leaking to the media that she’s eyeing racketeering charges, the Fulton County DA knows that she’s somewhat staking herself to bringing such charges. Even though she’s not going to be the first prosecutor to indict Trump, she appears to want the public to know that her indictment will include very serious charges.
So what’s the timeframe? No one knows. Even though the special grand jury has completed its work and given the Fulton County DA its final report, she still has to present that report to a regular grand jury for the formality of bringing the indictment. And for that she has to wait for regular grand jury availability. CNN is pointing out that two such grand juries were seated earlier this month, but no one knows whether the DA has been able to get time in front of either of these grand juries. For all we know she could already be in front of one of them presenting her case. The trick with covering grand jury processes is that everything is secret except for what leaks out.
