So who else is getting indicted for January 6th alongside Donald Trump?
Donald Trump has now revealed that on Sunday, he received a target letter from Jack Smith regarding January 6th. It’s possible that other people also simultaneously received target letters, but if that’s the case, none of them have gone public with it yet. Given how quick Republicans are to whine about these things and play the victim, you’d think anyone else who received a target letter over the weekend would have announced as much by now.
So does this mean Trump is the only one getting indicted? Probably not. Over the past few months various major media outlets have reported that people like Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Michael Flynn, John Eastman, and numerous others were all being examined by Jack Smith’s grand jury.
It’s not realistic to expect that Jack Smith has concluded that there’s enough evidence to indict Donald Trump but none of his alleged co-conspirators. Nor is it realistic to think that they’ve all flipped on Trump. So at least some other people – probably a lot of other people – are probably also getting indicted by Jack Smith for January 6th. But it may not happen all at once.
Traditional prosecutions begin by indicting the lower level people, in the hope of pressuring them into flipping on the bigger fish. But it can be a long process if you have to wait for the lower level people to go on trial, get convicted, get sentenced to prison, decide they can’t stand the thought of going to prison, and finally flip.
Jack Smith’s task is not a traditional one, for two reasons. First, Donald Trump is trying to gear up to run for President again, meaning Smith doesn’t have time to wait for his co-conspirators to go through the entire trial and conviction process before trying to flip them. Second, Smith already has so much evidence and so many friendly witnesses, he has the grounds to indict Trump now. Anyone else who flips along the way can be added later as a witness against Trump at trial, which is when they’ll be the most valuable.
In the Espionage Act probe, we saw Jack Smith indict Donald Trump first (along with Walt Nauta). Then, weeks after the fact, Smith sent a target letter to another Mar-a-Lago employee. There are media rumblings that Smith is still gearing up to indict some of Trump’s former attorneys in that probe. It’s very much looking like a top-down approach. Indicting Trump right off the bat started the clock for getting to his trial, because there’s an urgency to that, whereas the lower level people can be indicted whenever.
There’s every reason to expect we might see Jack Smith employ the same top-down approach to his 2020 election probe. Smith’s priority is to indict Donald Trump in a timely manner so it can get to trial well before the election. If Smith is able to simultaneously indict certain co-conspirators, without it slowing down the process of indicting Trump, he surely will. But it could end up being that Trump gets indicted by himself for January 6th next week, and then Smith circles back next month to bring the less urgent indictments against everyone else.
All that said – and I’ve said this a number of times – we shouldn’t get our hopes up about everybody getting indicted for January 6th. Donald Trump is obviously getting indicted, which is what matters. Other people who clearly committed provable crimes in relation to the election will also get indicted, now or later. But it is highly unlikely that Jack Smith could get a conviction at trial against a member of Congress for merely doing something like pumping their fist, or giving a speech, or voting a certain way on election certification. And because this isn’t a reality show, there’s no point in indicting someone who’s just going to end up being acquitted.
Jack Smith has decisions to make about whose actions in relation to January 6th can actually get a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt from a trial jury in a court of law. His decisions will surely be based on that factor alone, not on whether he’s feeling “aggressive” or any of the nonsense words that get assigned by the media. Like any good prosecutor, Smith will bring charges that he can win on, not charges that are designed to make the audience’s socks roll up and down. I just can’t stress enough that none of this is a reality show. None of it is meant for your entertainment.
So let’s set our expectations accordingly. Regardless of how many or few people are indicted at the same time as Donald Trump, a good number of people involved with January 6th will end up indicted by Jack Smith sooner or later. But not every single name on your list of villains will end up indicted, because the law doesn’t work that way. Let’s keep a level head as more information trickles out about Jack Smith’s indictments. More importantly let’s remember that the most important target here is Donald Trump – and we already know he’s getting indicted for January 6th.
