The countdown to Donald Trump’s arrest begins

| 9:45 pm EST November 9, 2020
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When a New York grand jury subpoenaed Donald Trump’s tax returns about a year ago, and Trump challenged the subpoena in court, it tipped off that New York was in the process of criminally indicting him on state charges. After all, it’s why grand juries exist, and they wouldn’t be going after his taxes unless they were targeting him for indictment on financial crimes.

The DOJ has a (flimsy) policy about not indicting a sitting President, but that doesn’t apply to state charges. New York could theoretically have indicted Trump at any time over the past year. But it might have had a hard time trying to actually arrest him while he was still in the White House. We also don’t know how far along the criminal case is. The grand jury has evidence from Michael Cohen and could choose to indict based on that alone, but obviously it’s also seeking its tax returns.

Now that Trump has lost the election, and has a specific date for no longer being President, we’ll see how New York State plans to play this. It could indict him now, with plans to arrest him in January, as a way of trying to reel in whatever corrupt antics he might be tempted to try during the transition period. But this could also backfire and push Trump to brinksmanship on his way out the door. New York could also simply be waiting to indict him until he’s out of office. In any case, state charges can’t be pardoned by the president, and Trump can’t dodge this.

This is all before we get to whatever charges the DOJ might bring against Donald Trump after he’s no longer President. Joe Biden stated multiple times during the election that he would simply let the DOJ decide how to prosecute Trump and he would stay out of it. The Feds at the SDNY have already designated Trump as “Individual 1” and made clear that he’s an indictment target. Trump can try pardoning himself on federal charges, but that pardon would likely be challenged in court.

In any case, at this point it’s all just a countdown to when Donald Trump gets indicted and arrested. We don’t have any way of knowing the precise timeframe. All we know is that it’ll end up happening.