Michael Cohen goes to the grand jury against Donald Trump
Key witness Michael Cohen has been repeatedly meeting with the Manhattan District Attorney’s office over the criminal case against Donald Trump. This matters greatly because Cohen had a front row seat to the campaign finance crimes that Trump is being indicted for. But now things have escalated, and it points to being near the end of the indictment process.
Over the past several weeks, various major media outlets have reported that everyone from Trump Organization controller Jeff McConney to former National Enquirer boss David Pecker has testified to the grand jury. And earlier this week it was reported that Kellyanne Conway – who was running Trump’s 2016 campaign at the time – had also testified to the grand jury. These kinds of witnesses usually testify to the grand jury in ascending order of importance.
Now, according to CBS News, the Manhattan DA’s office is putting Michael Cohen himself in front of the grand jury. Cohen is probably the most central and crucial witness in this case, so he’s probably one of the last witnesses (perhaps the last witness) who’s going to testify to the grand jury.
Once prosecutors have finished putting all of the witnesses in front of the grand jury, and the criminal case has been fully presented, that’s it. That’s the part where prosecutors then ask the grand jury to indict the criminal target(s), and in nearly all cases, the grand jury agrees and brings the indictments.
The situation in Fulton County Georgia is a little different. The DA had been waiting too long for access to a regular grand jury, so she empaneled a special grand jury to build the case in front of, and now that that’s done, she’s having to wait for a regular grand jury to come available to rubber stamp the indictment.
But none of that exists in Manhattan. The DA has been able to build his case in front of a regular grand jury to begin with. So when he’s done presenting his case, that’s it, the indictment drops.
Since there has been no information on how far the Fulton County DA has progressed through the regular grand jury cycle, we have no way knowing when she’ll be able to indict Trump. It could he tomorrow or it could be weeks. So it’s becoming really intriguing as to whether Fulton County or Manhattan will indict Trump first. But we could now be finding out within days.
