While Donald Trump was being arrested in Manhattan, the DOJ had a key witness testify against him to the grand jury
In spite of all the endless narratives from the media and pundit class about how the DOJ has been “dragging its heels” in its criminal case against Donald Trump, that’s simply not what has been playing out. It’s taken the DOJ a very long time (dating back to way before Jack Smith) to build an overwhelming enough of a case against Trump so that it could convince the courts to strike down executive privilege and order the key witnesses to testify to the grand jury.
Once the DOJ has gotten that clearance from the court, it’s moved very quickly to get these witnesses in front of the grand jury. After the courts ruled that Trump’s attorney Evan Corcoran must testify against him in the classified documents case, the DOJ had Corcoran in front of the grand jury within a few days. Now it’s happened again.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals denied Trump’s last ditch effort to block the testimony of a number of key January 6th figures. Now it turns out the DOJ turned around and quietly put one of those witnesses, Ken Cuccinelli, in front of the grand jury that same day. That’s right, even as Trump was being arrested in the Manhattan case, the DOJ had a key witness testifying against Trump to the grand jury in the federal case against him.
Keep in mind that we generally only learn about who’s testifying to a grand jury if the witness tells the media about it, or if reporters see that person going in or out of the courthouse. In other words, the majority of witnesses end up testifying to the grand jury without us even knowing about it. So if Cuccinelli testified on Tuesday, it’s possible that the other witnesses such as Mark Meadows and Stephen Miller have also secretly testified. Based on how quickly the DOJ is seizing the moment after these rulings, if they haven’t testified already, they will very soon.
Of course this brings us to Mike Pence’s decision on Wednesday not to appeal the recent court order for him to testify to the grand jury. Pence knows he’d only be able to drag this out for a couple more weeks anyway. So instead he’s just going along with it. Trump can try to appeal this on his own, but without Pence’s help, any such appeal would die very quickly. So now we’re looking at Pence testifying very soon as well.
Keep in mind that someone as high profile as Mike Pence will try very hard to keep his grand jury testimony a secret while it’s happening. He’ll be taken in through a parking garage or something along those lines, so the media can’t spot him. And then we’ll see headlines after the fact about how Pence has testified. Just as we’re seeing headlines after the fact that Ken Cuccinelli testified on Tuesday, the same day the appeals court gave the DOJ the all clear to put him on the stand.
