Former President Donald Trump has stayed one step ahead of the law for years. His luck appears to be finally running out.
Three sets of criminal prosecutors based in Georgia, Washington D.C., and New York are closing in on Trump. All three are pursuing cases that could yield criminal charges within the next few months. Two of them—in Georgia and Washington D.C.—are showing clear signs of nearing the end of their probes, former prosecutors and legal experts told VICE News.
Videos by VICE
The single most pressing is likely in Georgia, where Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis told a local judge in late January that charging decisions are “imminent” in her long-running probe into possible 2020 election crimes. That was just the latest sign Willis is on a glidepath to charging Trump, said Titus Nichols, a Georgia defense attorney and former prosecutor in the Augusta District Attorney’s Office.
“He’s getting charged with something,” Nichols told VICE News. “If she [Willis] was going to NOT charge him, then it would be a simple, singular decision and she’d be done with it. Now, there is still the huge question of what charges exactly will be brought, and against who.”
All three of these probes connect to allegations that Trump engaged in election malfeasance. In Georgia, Willis is investigating whether Trump attempted to steal the 2020 vote in the Peach State. In New York, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office is examining Trump’s role in a hush-money scheme to stop adult film actress Stormy Daniels from sharing details of her alleged sexual affair with Trump before the 2016 election. And in Washington D.C., Special Counsel Jack Smith is looking at Trump’s attempts to stay in power despite losing the 2020 election, and also at whether Trump broke the law by hoarding secret government documents at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach.
Trump has denied wrongdoing in all instances. Yet all three probes are now showing fresh signs of life. The upshot is that Trump is entering a season of acute legal peril, in which he may soon become the first former president to ever be charged with a crime.
Atlanta: Trouble in Georgia
Trump’s legal problems appear to be coming to a head in Atlanta.
Willis has already handed out almost 20 target letters informing Trump allies that they are likely to be charged. Recipients include Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and all of the so-called fake electors who signed a document falsely declaring Trump the winner in Georgia. In early February, she said there could be “multiple” defendants.
Last year Willis requested and oversaw a special purpose grand jury, which sat for seven months and heard testimony from 75 witnesses related to Trump and the 2020 election. The panel subpoenaed top Trump allies including former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, GOP South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, and former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.
Willis and the grand jury have pursued a sweeping range of topics, including the so-called “fake electors,” Giuliani’s appearances in front of Georgia lawmakers, and the copying of election data by Trump allies in Coffee County, GA.
Willis has said she’s investigating potential solicitation to commit voter fraud and violations of the state’s broad racketeering statute, which bans using any organization to commit a series of crimes. Some legal experts have suggested that organization could be the Trump campaign. But Willis hasn’t revealed her plans yet, and she is not known to have given Trump a target letter.
The probe is scheduled to reach a major milestone on Thursday when a local Atlanta judge releases portions of the special purpose grand jury’s final report, including the introduction, conclusion and a section on whether some witnesses lied under oath.
The report contains specific charging recommendations and names of possible defendants. But Willis and Judge Robert McBurney have agreed that those details should be held secret until after Willis makes up her mind about who should be indicted, in order to protect the integrity of potential future prosecutions.
Yet that guarded language, combined with the flurry of target letters, has spurred widespread speculation that Willis does indeed intend to bring charges against a bevy of Trump allies, and possibly against Trump himself.
“The allegations are very serious,” Willis recently told the Washington Post. “If indicted and convicted, people are facing prison sentences.
The question now is what exactly she meant when she said charging decisions are “imminent” on Jan. 24.
Asked by a reporter for the Atlanta Journal Constitution what she meant on Monday, Willis quipped that she meant “legally imminent, not reporter imminent.”
Washington, DC: Special Counsel
There are signs that special counsel Jack Smith is also closing in on charging decisions as well—although he may need a few more months.
The tip-off is Smith’s subpoena for former Vice President Mike Pence.
The Pence subpoena suggests both that Smith’s probe is nearing an endpoint, and also that Smith is likely to bring a criminal case, legal experts said. That’s because prosecutors often save their most important investigative interviews for last, after they’ve gathered up as much information as they can. And Smith would likely be hesitant to slap a subpoena on a former Vice President if he didn’t mean business.
“I think the fact that the special counsel was willing to take the extraordinary step of serving a subpoena on a former vice president means that there is a good likelihood of criminal charges,” said Barbara McQuade, the former top federal prosecutor in Detroit. “They would not take such a significant step if they did not think it was necessary to their assessment of potential charges.”
Yet Smith’s decision to subpoena Pence also suggests a willingness to stage a long, drawn-out legal battle for the former vice president’s testimony.
Pence said Wednesday he intends to fight the subpoena and resist testifying against Trump. The resulting legal battle could easily stretch all the way up to the Supreme Court, and could take months to play out.
Smith is hoping to wrap up his investigation before the 2024 campaign gets underway in earnest, and probably by this summer, according to a recent report in the New York Times.
The Pence subpoena relates to the investigation into Trump’s attempts to stay in power despite losing the 2020 election. But Smith is also reportedly working hard on his second task: investigating whether Trump broke the law by stashing secret government documents at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach.
Toward that end, Smith’s team is also reportedly attempting to pierce attorney-client privilege relating to Evan Corcoran, a lawyer representing Trump in the Mar-a-Lago case, the Times reported on Tuesday. Smith’s team is attempting to convince a judge that there’s enough evidence of criminal wrongdoing that the attorney-client privilege can be breached, according to the Times. It’s not clear yet what this evidence is.
Manhattan: Sex and money
That’s not even the end of Trump’s legal woes: There’s also the New York hush money.
The years-old cash-for-silence probe has been resurrected so many times that it’s become known in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office as the “zombie case.” Yet recent reports indicate the investigation is once again very much alive.
The case revolves around hush-money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Those payouts were intended to stop Daniels from telling the press about an affair with Trump before the 2016 election, which Trump has repeatedly denied
Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg recently began showing evidence to a grand jury, according to the Times, in a development that could set the stage for potential criminal charges within a matter of months.
Bragg’s team recently gathered up the phones of Trump’s estranged former attorney, Michael Cohen. They have reportedly warned Trump’s longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, the elderly financier now serving out a five-month sentence on Rikers Island after admitting financial crimes, that he could face fresh charges in an otherwise unrelated insurance matter if he refuses to cooperate with Bragg’s prosecutors. And they’ve begun calling in witnesses from the Trump Organization, his 2016 campaign, and the National Enquirer.
Cohen pleaded guilty to his role in the scheme and was sentenced to three years in prison for this and other confessed crimes. Bragg’s team is now reportedly examining whether a fresh case can be brought over the falsification of documents involved in repaying Cohen for the payment he made to Daniels to buy her silence.
Those payments to Cohen were categorized by Trump’s company as legal payments, according to files from Cohen’s legal case.
The case is old, but could still be a potent legal threat to Trump, according to Gene Rossi, a former prosecutor for the Eastern District of Virginia who now works as a defense attorney. Rossi previously represented Daniels’ former attorney, Keith Davidson, when the hush money payments were investigated by federal officials.
“I believe the Stormy Daniels shenanigans are probably the strongest chargeable case against Donald Trump, if the Manhattan District Attorney wishes to pursue it,” Rossi told VICE News. “There’s the evidence, there’s a certain salaciousness about it, and there’s a key conspirator who’s already pleaded guilty: Michael Cohen.”
