Manhattan DA pushes back by a day in Donald Trump case, even as DOJ wins appeal and schedules key witness testimony

| 5:34 pm EDT March 22, 2023
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Today the we got the surprise news that the Manhattan District Attorney didn’t convene the grand jury today in his Donald Trump criminal case, and may instead be waiting until tomorrow. No reason has been given. But even as everyone tries to unravel that mystery, major breakthrough news has happened in the DOJ’s criminal case against Trump.

The U.S. Court of Appeals ruled today that Trump attorney Evan Corcoran must testify to the DOJ grand jury about a phone call he had with Trump, which incriminates Trump for obstruction of justice in the classified documents case. This ruling came just a couple days after the original judge’s ruling, meaning the courts are flying through this process. Trump’s only remaining option would be to appeal to the Supreme Court, which would also quickly reject him, and that would probably buy him less than week. To that end, CNN is now reporting that Trump is unlikely to bother appealing to the Supreme Court, and that Corcoran is now scheduled to testify to the grand jury this Friday.

The appeals court also ruled that the DOJ is entitled to Corcoran’s related notes, memos, and recordings, meaning Corcoran can’t just lie to the grand jury. It takes a very long time to piece together every bit of what happened so that a reluctant key witness can’t get away with lying and has to just tell the truth. But the DOJ is there now with Corcoran. Jack Smith has his man.

Corcoran’s testimony would appear to complete the DOJ’s obstruction of justice case against Donald Trump, meaning Jack Smith could theoretically bring that indictment against Trump as soon as next week if he wanted to. But there’s a lot we don’t know. Is Smith also indicting Trump under the Espionage Act? If so, are those charges complete? Is Smith’s 1/6 case against Trump complete? And if the obstruction charge is ready before the other charges, will Smith bring the obstruction charge first on its own, or will he wait until all the federal charges are ready?

This brings us back to the Manhattan DA’s decision to delay his case by day. Some have asked if it’s possible that the DOJ has asked the DOJ to hold off because the DOJ now wants to indict Trump first. That’s possible, but it’s not supported by what we’ve seen so far. For the DOJ to go first, the DA would need to delay his indictment until at least next week, and so far the has apparently only delayed things by one day.

A couple of media outlets have said that the Manhattan DA may be putting another witness in front of the grand jury on Thursday, and had to prepare for it today. This is also possible. But the first person to put this claim forward was Trump witness Robert Costello during his meltdown outside the courthouse. He’s not a reliable source. So if the media is basing its reporting about a supposed new witness on the things that Costello is saying, then it should be discounted.

It was also reported last night that the Manhattan DA has come into possession of communications that could get Trump attorney Joe Tacopina kicked off the case due to a conflict of interest. It’s possible that the DA is pursuing this angle before bringing the indictment. If the DA can get Tacopina booted, Tacopina wouldn’t be able to go on TV once the indictment drops and push Trump’s false narratives about the case.

But the bottom line is we don’t know what’s going on. We don’t know if these developments in these two very different criminal cases against Donald Trump are related. We don’t know the precise timeline that either prosecutor has in mind. We don’t yet know for sure if the Manhattan DA is convening the grand jury tomorrow or not. We don’t know if the DOJ is planning to imminently indict Trump after Corcoran’s testimony. Oh, and we don’t know anything about what’s going on with the grand jury indictment process in Fulton County.

But that’s the nature of the beast. Prosecutors can’t really say much publicly or put anything out there during the grand jury process, due to the secret nature of the grand jury process. We’re merely working with the scraps of who a reporter spots going into a courthouse, and what kind of disingenuous spin someone on the wrong end of the probe might strategically leak to the media. We have more questions than answers right now, and that’s to be expected. But we’ll start getting answers soon, because indictments will speak for themselves.