U.S. Court of Appeals just handed Jack Smith key grand jury witnesses against Donald Trump; indictment endgame seemingly near
Even as Donald Trump was being arrested on state charges in Manhattan today, the U.S. Court of Appeals denied Trump’s motion to block Mark Meadows and other January 6th witnesses from testifying against him to the DOJ grand jury. This was filed just days ago. Moving that quickly. Jack Smith is now that much closer to having all his witnesses in place for indicting Trump.
Given how swiftly the DOJ has been putting witnesses in front of the grand jury after such court rulings, you can probably expect all of these people to testify against Trump this week.
At this point these witnesses have no way to magically get out of this. If they refuse to testify, the courts haul them in under contempt of court. The DOJ already knows the real story by now, so they can’t just lie under oath to protect Trump.
And as far as the fifth amendment, that’s not a magic wand either. For instance prosecutors can give immunity to any of these witnesses on the spot regarding any question, meaning they’ll have to answer it. Some of them likely have immunity or cooperation deals in place with the DOJ anyway, and the only reason their testimony was being held up was that Trump was fighting it in court.
Trump can still ask the Supreme Court for an emergency stay to keep these witnesses from testifying. But last time around Trump didn’t even bother to do that, because he knew he’d instantly lose.
This means the appeals court has cleared every known witness to testify against Trump, with the exception of Mike Pence. The court has ruled that Pence must testify, but the appeals court hasn’t ruled on that one yet. Look for the Pence ruling soon. It’s possible the last piece of the puzzle in the DOJ’s criminal case against Trump.
