The U.S. Supreme Court made it impossible to try Donald Trump on election interference charges before he faces voters in November, but one former prosecutor said it's not too late to indict his alleged co-conspirators.
District Judge Tanya Chutkan had the case returned to her after eight months, and she appears to be quickly moving forward to determine which charges will stick after the conservative justices granted Trump immunity, but legal expert Randall Eliason published a column on his Sidebars blog urging special counsel Jack Smith to issue charges against additional defendants to shed new light on the case.
"When Smith brought his case for the events of January 6, he indicted Trump alone," wrote Eliason, a professor at George Washington University Law School. "By contrast, the Georgia state case based largely on the same events charged nineteen defendants, including Trump. A case of that size, with nineteen defense attorneys all filing motions and making arguments, is inherently slow and unwieldy. Even before the case was sidetracked by allegations over the DA’s potential conflict of interest, it was destined to move at a glacial pace."
ALSO READ: Why ‘vanilla’ Tim Walz is the ingredient to beat Trump: Dem lawmakers
Smith charged only the former president but listed six co-conspirators he decided not to charge to streamline the prosecution, but the Supreme Court stalled the case for months before seriously weakening it with their immunity ruling, and Trump could kill it altogether if he wins a second term in office.
"The election deadline and corresponding need to fast-track the case are now off the table," Eliason wrote. "And that means it would be a good time for Jack Smith to revisit charging some of Trump’s co-conspirators."
The indictments list six alleged-conspirators widely believed to be Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Sidney Powell, Jeffrey Clark, and Kenneth Chesebro, while Eliason suspects the final suspect as Mike Roman.
"These same six individuals were indicted as co-conspirators with Trump in the Georgia state case, where Chesebro and Powell have already pleaded guilty," Eliason said. "Giuliani, Eastman and Roman were also among those indicted in a state case in Arizona based on the scheme to overturn the election results there."
Trump is an unindicted co-conspirator in the Arizona case, where the grand jury reportedly wanted to indict the former president, and Chesebro has been indicted in Wisconsin on similar charges.
"The D.C. indictment already spells out how these individuals allegedly were part of a conspiracy with Trump to overturn the presidential election by different unlawful means," Eliason wrote. "It would be relatively easy for Smith to return to the grand jury and obtain a superseding indictment that turns some or all of these unindicted co-conspirators into indicted ones. Smith may also have other co-conspirators in his sights who were not specified in the indictment and could also be added."
Although Clark served in the Department of Justice at the time, so some of Trump's interactions with him might plausibly covered under the presidential immunity ruling, but the others were private attorneys or a political consultant working for Trump and his campaign.
"In the event Trump wins the election, having indicted his co-conspirators now will at least serve as a public declaration from the grand jury and Justice Department that criminal charges against those individuals were appropriate," Elias wrote. "If Trump is going to kill the case, he should have to take the full political heat for dropping indictments of a number of individuals, not just himself."