(Ken Silva, Headline USA) NBC News reported Sunday that “dozens of witnesses” have testified to a Washington DC grand jury about Donald Trump’s alleged attempts to interfere in the 2020 presidential election—strongly suggesting that Trump will be indicted over the matter soon.
The NBC story said Trump likely won’t be charged directly for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol Hill protest.
“Trump’s words are protected by the First Amendment, and his rhetoric — telling the people in the crowd they were “not going to have a country anymore” if they didn’t “fight like hell” — could fit within the realm of heated political rhetoric. Trump also explicitly told the crowd to march “peacefully,” which would make charges even more difficult,” the news outlet admitted.
However, Special Counsel Jack Smith is probing Trump’s so-called fake elector scheme—referring to Trump’s plan to use alternate electors to challenge the results of controversial results in Nevada, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona. Earlier this month, NBC News reported that two of the “fake electors” appeared before the Washington grand jury the same day that Trump made his first court appearance in Miami.
On the same day as the NBC News story, CBS News’s Robert Costa reported another scoop about the Special Counsel Murphy’s investigation of the 2020 election aftermath. According to Costa, Murphy is also probing Trump for allegedly considering to use federal authority to seize voting machines.
Hearing from 2 sources, familiar with the special counsel grand jury on J6, that Trump's consideration of using purported fed. authority to seize voting machines is under scrutiny. SC probing whether there was criminal intent to build a premise for delay/block in certification…
— Robert Costa (@costareports) July 10, 2023
Unlike other commentators, Costa said he’s not sure whether Murphy’s probe will result in election-related charges against Trump.
“The question remains, though, whether [special counsel] will seek indictments or write up a lengthy report… no one I’ve spoken with, with varying levels of connection to the investigation, is quite sure what Smith will do… the constant word is this is ‘serious’ but hard to predict,” the reporter said.
But given the dubious nature of the other two cases against Trump—the campaign finance matter in New York and the classified documents case in Florida—the former president’s supporters are convinced that J6-related charges are looming.
“When he is indicted … which I think the chances have increased tremendously after today, I think he might get ‘pretrial detention’—what they did to every defendant charged with seditious conspiracy,” conservative writer Julie Kelly said in May, in the wake of the Proud Boys J6 convictions in March. “So now they have a precedent for courts to sign off on.”
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
