The real reason Jack Smith’s Trump 1/6 grand jury didn’t meet today
Jack Smith’s Trump 1/6 grand jury reportedly didn’t meet today. Multiple possible interpretations, but best guess is there are no remaining witnesses, nothing left to do but indict, Smith has decided for scheduling reasons to indict on Thursday, and so they didn’t meet today.
Another explanation would be that the grand jury indicted Trump under seal last week, and Jack Smith is just waiting to unseal it. But why would he wait like this? Perhaps he’s unsealing his 1/6 charges against Trump simultaneously with Fani Willis. But this feels like a reach.
Then there are these various reports about witnesses still being scheduled to either meet with Jack Smith, or testify to his 1/6 grand jury, weeks from now. My interpretation of this has been that Smith is indicting Trump now and indicting the underlings after the fact. But it is theoretically possible that Smith is still building his case against Trump and won’t indict for weeks to come. It just seems unlikely, for a few reasons. He seemingly needs to get out ahead of Willis. And if there’s still that much work to be done, why wouldn’t the grand jury be working today?
In potentially confusing instances like this, I like to fall back on the axiom that the most straightforward explanation is most likely to be the correct one. That would point to Jack Smith and his grand jury indicting Trump the next time it’s scheduled to meet, which is this Thursday.
That said, if the grand jury fails to meet again on Thursday, then we’ll have to look for a different explanation. For clarity, this grand jury doesn’t typically meet on Wednesdays, so if they don’t meet tomorrow it won’t mean anything.
In any case, I always try to up front about the fact that when it comes to the precise timing of grand jury indictments, it’s only possible for me or anyone else to make educated best guesses. Grand jury proceedings are secret for a reason. We’re all mostly in the dark. But we’ll find out soon enough.
