Trump could be charged with obstruction and conspiracy if the DOJ 'seriously' digs in: former prosecutor

In an interview with CNN's Chris Cillizza, former federal prosecutor Elie Honig expressed dismay at the slow pace of the Justice Department if it is, indeed, investigating Donald Trump and pointed out the most obvious charges the former president could be facing if everything lines up in the courts with regard to evidence.

Speaking with the CNN editor-at-large, Honig suggested that he has his doubts that the DOJ has an open investigation of Trump based on how they have remained silent about the Jan 6th House committee inquiry based upon normal protocols.

"First of all, normally DOJ doesn't wait for or depend on Congress to gather facts. To the contrary, if DOJ is investigating a particular person or a topic, it will ask Congress to stand down and allow DOJ to proceed first; as a prosecutor, you never want some other entity questioning or potentially immunizing your witnesses or your targets," he explained. "The fact that DOJ seemingly has not asked the committee to stand down -- [California] Rep. Adam Schiff has publicly confirmed this -- suggests to me that DOJ is not currently investigating Trump or others around him in a direct, serious way."

Having said that and admitting he could be wrong, Honig suggested Trump faces a slightly more serious threat in Georgia, telling Cillizza, "We could see state charges in Georgia from the Fulton County DA relating to election fraud, though it's far from certain the DA will in fact indict (and the DA has been moving on an inexplicably slow, and suboptimal, timeline)."

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Pressed on what other charges could be in store for the former president, the former prosecutor claimed that if the DOJ was "seriously dig in" -- with the caveat that it is "trending towards unlikely" two charges against Trump could stick.

"I see potential charges for obstruction of an official proceeding (here, the counting of electoral votes by Congress) and conspiracy to deprive the United States of a fair election. The focus here would be on the effort to steal the election by fraud and coercion leading up to January 6 -- pressuring local officials, the fake electors scheme, weaponizing DOJ, and pressuring [Vice President] Mike Pence to illegally discard certain electoral votes," he explained before adding the Jan 6th committee is doing its job, but it is at the mercy of Attorney General Merrick Garland's DOJ.

On a more positive note, he pointed out, "The [Jan 6th House] committee already has uncovered an awful lot of remarkably compelling evidence -- testimony from certain key insiders, the Mark Meadows texts, the fake elector certificates, and more. Prosecutors are free to consider and use this evidence (subject to technical rules of evidence) and the more compelling the evidence found by the committee, the more likely we are to see charges."

You can read the whole interview here.