Former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner says that the news Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. has stepped up his investigation of former President Donald Trump by empaneling a grand jury that will meet three days a week for six months could well lead to some of Trump’s supporters turning to violence and domestic terrorism.
Appearing on MSNBC’s “The Reid Out,” Kirschner began by discussing the acceleration of efforts by Vance as he looks at Trump and the Trump Organization:
“I agree that the DA empaneling this extraordinary grand jury, which will sit for six months as opposed to four weeks, doesn’t guarantee Trump will be indicted. It’s clearly the last stop on the road to an indictment. And every data point we have seen from the district attorney’s office trends toward indictment, whether it was the two-year battle to get his tax returns and his financials, two trips to the Supreme Court, they finally got ahold of it. They spent considerable New York taxpayer dollars hiring an expensive forensic accounting firm to help them unravel those documents. They then brought on board an expert mob former prosecutor as part of the team. Now they have empaneled a special grand jury to hear all the testimony of the witnesses and lock them in.”
Then Kirschner — who once worked for former Special Counsel Robert Mueller — warned that in a statement the ex-president released after the Washington Post broke the story about the new Manhattan grand jury, Trump claimed the entire investigation was an attack on not just on him, but on “us,” meaning those who still support him. That could set off a wave of terror attacks and violence by his supporters:
“I think there is a threat of violence. In the statement that Donald Trump made — we have seen this movie before. What did he put out a statement saying in response to [D.A. Cy] Vance’s announcement that there is a special grand jury being empaneled? He said, this is an affront not to me, to my 75 million followers, supporters, voters. What is he doing? He is trying to pull them in his criminal orbit. He is sending a signal, if I get indicted, you are figuratively getting indicted. What are you going to do about that? We have seen this movie before. He did it on January 6th when he lost the election.”
Thankfully, we now have a president and attorney general who will not tolerate such actions and are more than capable of responding to anyone who carries out violence in the name of Donald Trump.