More charges coming
We keep hearing legal theories offered for why Jack Smith decided to bring these specific January 6th charges against Donald Trump, and not other potential January 6th charges. But these explanations are always based on the (potentially false) assumption that no more charges are coming.
We just saw this same thing play out in the Mar-a-Lago case. Jack Smith brought initial charges against Trump. Then we had to listen to theories about why Smith had decided not to bring charges like willful retention. Then Smith brought a superseding indictment that added a willful retention charge. In hindsight it’s clear that he simply wanted to flip Trump Employee #4 before doing so.
Smith could easily be planning to do the same thing to Trump in the January 6th case. In fact this week’s indictment only addressed the fake elector plot and the fraudulent scheme to pressure Mike Pence to overturn the election results. The indictment didn’t address Trump’s January 6th Willard Hotel “command center” at all. Nor did it refer to any of the people connected to that command center, even though several of them are reportedly being investigated by Smith.
There is every reason to expect Jack Smith to bring additional January 6th related criminal indictments. We don’t know for sure that Donald Trump will be hit with additional charges as part of those indictments. But there’s no reason to assume that Trump won’t be hit with additional January 6th charges.
