Sorry, you’ll have to wait a little longer in Manhattan – but it’s for good reason
The Manhattan grand jury is reportedly not meeting tomorrow. Donald Trump’s indictment will have to wait for next week. That’s fine. If this is showing us anything, it’s that indictment is a process. I don’t care if it’s last week or this week or next week, only that it lands a conviction.
The most plausible explanation would be that the DA’s office has been reviewing prior testimony to determine if it wants to bring anyone else back to further rebut Robert Costello’s claims. That’s what happened with David Pecker, so it’s probably what’s still happening.
This grand jury only meets on Mondays and Wednesdays to hear the Trump case. It meets on Thursdays to hear other cases. It doesn’t meet on Tuesdays and Fridays because grand jurors are average citizens who need days off to maintain their real world lives while they’re serving on the grand jury.
So you can go down the rabbit hole of “oh no this must mean the case has been dropped, we’re doomed.” Or you can accept the reality that they’re probably calling back another witness and need time for prep, and tomorrow is just too soon, and that means waiting until next week.
There’s a reason Trump falsely announced over the weekend that the case had been dropped: he knew that a number of media outlets would run headlines implying his claim was true. But you all saw proof yesterday that he was lying. There’s no reason to believe now that it’s been “dropped.”
By the way, this is why Fani Willis went with a special grand jury in Georgia, dedicated solely to her case. She didn’t want to wait for another opening in the regular grand jury calendar each time she needed to put a witness on the stand.
And even now, with that special grand jury having completed its probe, she’s still having to wait for openings in the regular grand jury calendar just to complete the formality of having a regular grand jury look at the report and vote on indictment.
And to be clear, Bragg could have indicted Trump last week. He’s way past the threshold required to get a grand jury to vote to indict. But this isn’t about just indicting Trump, it’s about getting a conviction.
Bragg saw the opportunity to preemptively neuter one of Trump’s trial defense witnesses, by bringing in rebuttal witnesses now instead of waiting for trial. And good for him. It shows Bragg is looking to convict Trump, not just slap any indictment on him and call it a day.
