Who’s up first?
By default, criminal investigations play out behind the scenes. For the most part, the only time the public gets updates is when someone (on either side of things) strategically decides to tip off the media about some aspect of the investigation. These tidbits are often out of context, usually arrive on a delay, and typically fail to paint a proper picture of what’s really going on with the probe – and that’s when we’re lucky enough to get any information at all. It’s why a lack of recent headlines about any given criminal probe does not correlate to a lack of ongoing action and progress in that probe.
But as a criminal probe advances, it gradually reaches the stage where more people involved with the probe know what’s going on, and more of them want to try to create a narrative about the probe through the media. We’re now seeing that in all three major criminal cases that are being carried out against Donald Trump.
In Fulton County we’ve got the District Attorney announcing in court that indictments are coming, and we’ve got a juror strongly hinting to the media that Donald Trump will be among them. In Manhattan we’ve got key witness Michael Cohen giving the public just enough information to make it pretty clear that Trump is on track for indictment there as well. And in DOJ Special Counsel Jack Smith’s case, we’ve got somebody (or multiple somebodies) letting the media know about everything from Trump’s family being subpoenaed to Trump’s lawyers testifying against him.
At this point you’d have to be willfully blind to all of this to think that Donald Trump is somehow not going to be criminally indicted. Instead the real question is which of these three prosecutors is going to complete their work and produce an indictment first. We don’t truly know who’s closest to the finish line. Nor do we know if these prosecutors are communicating with each other on timing. After all, they’ll each be putting him on trial this year.
It’s a lot. It really is. There are a lot of moving parts. But when you’re on the verge of being criminally indicted in three different jurisdictions, all of which have key inside witnesses testifying against you, and the only question is who’s going to indict you first, you’re in a position where things are going to play out very, very badly for you.
