Turns out Jack Smith has Donald Trump nailed to the wall

| 9:30 pm EDT April 2, 2023
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Donald Trump’s criminal indictment in Manhattan has helped shatter those ridiculous yet pervasive narratives about how Trump would never be indicted “no matter what” and that if Trump were ever going to be indicted it “would have happened by now.” This kind of faux-logic only makes sense if you put no thought into it, and Trump’s Manhattan indictment seems to have brought a number of defeatists back to reality. It’s now widely understood that Trump is highly likely to end up indicted soon by Fulton County and the DOJ as well. Now there’s major news on one of those fronts.

It turns out DOJ Special Counsel Jack Smith doesn’t just have Donald Trump nailed for obstruction of justice, he has him overwhelmingly nailed. It’s bad enough for Trump that his own attorney Evan Corcoran was forced to testify against him to the grand jury two weeks ago. Now it turns out Smith has texts and emails from Trump’s assistant Molly Michael, which prove that after Trump first received a subpoena ordering him to return the classified documents, he personally went through the boxes and decided what to return and what to secretly keep, before falsely claiming that they’d all been returned.

There have been previous reports about Trump having done this. But criminal convictions come down to what can be proven, not just what’s being alleged. This evidence from Trump’s assistant, as reported today by the Washington Post, is proof that Trump intentionally hid classified documents from the federal government even after they’d been subpoenaed. That’s the kind of proof that lands you a conviction at trial on a felony charge like obstruction of justice.

In addition, the Post is reporting today that Smith has been investigating whether Trump showed classified documents “including maps” to some of his own political donors. If this can be proven, it can be seen under the Espionage Act as having essentially sold classified information.

Keep in mind that whenever these kinds of details get reported about an ultra-secretive criminal investigation like the one the DOJ is running, it’s nearly a given that the information is 1) already outdated, and 2) only a fraction of the overall story. If this is leaking out now, it’s likely that Trump’s assistant has already testified to the grand jury about it. It’s also likely that Smith’s investigation into Trump providing classified documents to donors has also already played out.

So when will Jack Smith indict Donald Trump in the classified documents scandal? We still don’t have any way of knowing for certain. But today’s news helps underscore that an indictment will obviously happen, and that the DOJ is a lot closer to the end of its probe than the beginning.

It’s also important to keep the obvious in mind: prosecutors know how to read a calendar. They understand how much time they’ll need to work their way through the court system, work past the various delay tactics that Trump will attempt to use, and hold a trial well before the 2024 election cycle truly gets underway. People like Jack Smith and Fani Willis will time their indictments of Trump accordingly. So it’s less about guessing when their indictments will happen, and it’s more about them pretty obviously knowing how much time they’re going to need to get this to trial.