A Georgia prosecutor’s announcement of a timeline for a decision in connection with an investigation of Donald Trump suggests the former president’s legal troubles are likely to grow this summer, a prominent legal expert said on Friday.
Ryan Goodman, a NYU law school professor and former special counsel at the Department of Defense, said Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ announcement that any grand jury indictments would come during the first three weeks of August suggests an indictment in the Georgia election interference case is a foregone conclusion, and that special counsel Jack Smith is likely to slap the former president with indictments,too.
Willis indicated that she plans to have most of her staffers working remotely and asked judges not to schedule trials and in-person hearings during an Aug. 7-18 window, along with heightened security.
Goodman during an appearance on CNN’s Out Front with Erin Burnett said Willis’ announcement is a “strong indication that there will be an indictment of the former President Trump during that period because these are security measures of a scale that it's difficult for me to conceive of any other explanation, it’s the best explanation and it's difficult to conceive of another one.”
Goodman also said it’s more likely that Smith, who is investigating Trump over his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and the former president’s handling of classified documents, will go first.
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“I think it makes it much more likely that the DOJ will go beforehand because now they have a pretty good window. They have an exact date that they know which is the mark. And I would imagine that their incentives are to go first, that they want to if they can,” Goodman said.
“Especially because of the Alvin Bragg situation,” Burnett interjected.
“Exactly. So that avoids that kind of situation again. They would like to have the narrative be about whatever it is that they want to present, they don't want the narrative, I would imagine, to be confused with some other kind of case, and whatever that comes with whatever baggage that comes with, present their case, to the public has what on its own terms. Now they have enough space to do that.”
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