Should Trump Be ‘Most Concerned’ About Looming Georgia Indictment, as His Former AG Warns?

The legal threats to President Trump are migrating south of the Mason-Dixon Line after New York’s turn in the spotlight. Now that the throngs have dispersed from Lower Manhattan, the possibility of federal and state charges emanating from the territory of college football’s Southeastern Conference has snapped into focus.Fulton County, in Georgia, may have more than 7 million fewer residents than New York County, but it could present greater legal peril for Mr. Trump than Gotham. A prosecutor in the Peachtree State, Fani Willis, is investigating efforts by the former president and his camarilla to overturn the results of the 2020 election in her state.Those efforts could soon find final form in an indictment. The Washington Post reports that Ms. Willis is “expected to announce in coming weeks whether she will file charges in connection to efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the state’s 2020 presidential election results.” She has previously called such a decision “imminent.” A special grand jury has already done its work, though its report is as of yet sealed. That group’s loquacious forewoman, Emily Kohrs, has told the press that whom that body recommended to indict is “not rocket science” and that “you’re not going to be shocked” by its findings. It has recommended perjury charges in the meanwhile, though against whom is unclear.Ms. Willis has also been tipping her hand, if not quite so extravagantly as Ms. Kohrs. The district attorney appears to be readying charges under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, which allows for prosecution of many people for disparate crimes if their efforts can all be attributed to the same “enterprise.” At a press conference in August, Ms. Willis gushed that “RICO is a tool that allows a prosecutor’s office or law enforcement to tell the whole story. And so we use it as a tool so that they can have all the information they need to make a wise decision.” She has used it to prosecute public school teachers and hip-hop gangs. In Mr. Trump’s own press conference at Mar-a-Lago after his Manhattan court appearance, he slammed Ms. Willis as a “local racist Democrat district attorney in Atlanta who is doing everything in her power to indict me over an absolutely perfect phone call.” That phone call was to Georgia’s secretary of state, Bradley Raffensperger, relating to Mr. Trump’s share of the vote. Ms. Willis responded that Mr. Trump’s comments were “ridiculous in nature, but I support his right to be protected by the First Amendment and say what he likes.” The former president has accused her office of engaging in “instances of forensic misconduct and improper extrajudicial activity” and asserted the special grand jury’s report “cannot be relied upon and, therefore, must be suppressed given the constitutional violations.”The documents found at Mr. Trump’s Palm Beach redoubt of Mar-a-Lago, 600 miles south of Fulton County, are shaping up to be yet another source of legal agita — or political rocket fuel — for the former president. That investigation, overseen by the special counsel, Jack Smith, appears to be accelerating. The Post reports “new and significant evidence that after the subpoena was delivered, Trump looked through the contents of some of the boxes of documents in his home, apparently out of a desire to keep certain things in his possession.” This appears to suggest that Mr. Smith is eyeing obstruction charges, in addition to any underlying charges. “People familiar with the investigation” tell the Post that “boxes including classified material were moved from a Mar-a-Lago storage area after the subpoena was served,” and that Mr. Trump “personally examined at least some of those boxes.” Mr. Trump’s former attorney general, Bill Barr, tells ABC that he “would be most concerned about the document case in Mar-a-Lago.”Also in Mr. Smith’s remit is deciding on Mr. Trump’s culpability for the events of January 6, 2021. In that endeavor he will seek testimony of a high-profile witness, Vice President Pence, after he dropped his resistance to at least parts of Mr. Smith’s subpoena — rooted in the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause — after a federal judge ruled that it did not stretch far enough to preclude answering questions about Mr. Trump’s behavior. Unwilling to let the matter rest there, Mr. Trump has appealed the decision that Mr. Pence must testify. The case is under seal, but reportedly the former president is citing the protection of executive privilege to mute Mr. Pence’s potential testimony. Such a maneuver has already failed in respect to a passel of Mr. Trump’s advisers, including a former chief of staff, Mark Meadows. The upshot of Mr. Pence’s acceptance of that ruling is that he will have to talk to Mr. Smith about what Mr. Trump did in the days and weeks leading up to January 6, a subject on which Mr. Pence has already expounded in his memoir, “So Help Me God.” For his part, Mr. Trump has mused about “this lunatic special prosecutor named Jack Smith.”

Should Trump Be ‘Most Concerned’ About Looming Georgia Indictment, as His Former AG Warns?

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