Even though there’s almost zero chance that any of the federal criminal cases against convicted felon Donald Trump will go to trial before the election in November, Special Counsel Jack Smith can still do tremendous damage to the disgraced ex-president in the months leading up to balloting.
That’s the warning from former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade who appeared on MSNBC’s “The Weekend” this morning and told the hosts, “It is not just the defendant, it is the public that has a right to a speedy trial. I think the more progress he [Smith] could make before president-elect Donald Trump goes into office, the more he can do at the other end.”
“You do not have to go back to a grand jury to remove things from an indictment where they already found probable cause,” she continued. “So he can pare this down to just those acts that he believes are official acts and go for it. Certainly, it will be litigated but the public will have an opportunity to see what the unofficial acts were: Organizing false slates of electors, pressuring state officials to flip the outcome of the election, and exploiting the chaos at the Capitol on January 6 to try to press legislators to delay the certification.”
McQuade added, “All of that, I think, is entitled to a public hearing. Of course, also the documents case out of Florida. Judge Aileen Cannon has made no effort to act with urgency. — no reason that case can’t proceed all the way through January to see how much progress they make.”
Every new detail Smith exposes in the months before Americans go to the polls could prove damaging to Trump’s already shaky prospects of winning a second term as president. And in an election that’s already expected to be close, those details could be a giant albatross for him.
