'You better cooperate': Legal expert sees threat against Trump co-conspirators in Jan. 6 indictment
August 02, 2023
There's an embedded threat in special counsel Jack Smith's indictment of Donald Trump for his efforts to overturn his election loss, according to a legal expert.
The 45-page indictment lists six co-conspirators – five of whom have been identified by multiple media outlets as Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Sidney Powell, Jeffrey Clark and Kenneth Chesebro, while the sixth remains a mystery – and former U.S. solicitor general Neal Katyal told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that prosecutors were holding potential charges over their heads in exchange for testimony against the former president.
"I think Jack Smith was doing this [charging only Trump] for getting this trial on the road," Katyal said. "He's looking at a clock in the November 2024 election, and the possibility that Trump or some other Republican might win and stop a trial that's not complete. And so what he has done here is said this is an indictment of one person, Donald Trump. Not saying there won't be other indictments – reading the indictment, it seems like other people, like Jeffrey Clark, will face indictments.
"They will be in separate cases, and the reason for that, when you have joint trials and joint defendants, it slows things down. We faced this, as a special prosecutor in the George Floyd murder that was committed primarily by Derek Chauvin but was committed by three officers. Do you try one and go faster or try them all, that would result in a slower trial?"
"Jack Smith has opted to go faster, charging just one, but all the other six are under alert," Katyal added.
"They know they are targets. They have done – they're named as – not by name, but singled out as committing serious federal crimes. This is where the conspiracy doctrine, which is three of the four charges, comes in. This doctrine has roots to flip the other defendants, and what these other six people are on notice of, you better cooperate with Jack Smith, otherwise you're looking at your own indictment. The facts of this indictment aren't all written in stone yet, there's more to come for any of the six or more to come."
Watch the video below or at this link.
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