Former President Donald Trump's fourth indictment at the hands of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is different, argued CNN's Van Jones on a Tuesday morning panel, for a key reason: A huge array of alleged co-conspirators are being prosecuted alongside him, including several of his lawyers, strategists, and party operatives in Georgia, over the plot to overturn the election results in that state.
Not only is this a more serious consequence, said Jones, it more closely resembles an indictment for a broad-ranging scheme.
"What strikes me as unique in this indictment it's sweeping and narrow in scope at the same time," said POLITICO's Emily Ngo. "So many people who are up and down the totem pole in Trump's world are now indicted as well. And they are a part of this whole mess he created for himself."
"Van, how do you think the 18 people indicted — this is the first time, we had unindicted co-conspirators in the special counsel's last charges," said anchor Phil Mattingly. "These 18 individuals. You talk about RICO, you think mob, you think flipping, you think people — I mean, Trump's been financing... the defense for his friends, allies. 18 people here."
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"They woke up in a different world," said Jones. "This is a different prosecutor. This is literally the mirror image of what Jack Smith did. Jack Smith said, a lot of bad people here, I am going after one person, Donald Trump, I will leave everybody else alone. They will be unindicted co-conspirators. This one says, nuh-uh, all y'all in trouble. Everybody gonna get it. So they wake up in a different world. This prosecutor, unlike Jack Smith... she says, no, you're in it, too. So these people — if Mark Meadows thought he was home safe because he was cooperating, he's not home safe. If these unindicted co-conspirators thought they were — they're all indicted."
The way Willis is treating this case, argued Jones, is "actually more normal."
"This is what we see every day at the neighborhood level," said Jones. "Four kids know each other, one does something bad, that's normal. Prosecutors usually throw a — they don't throw the book at you, they throw the library at you. This woman, she threw the library at these people. That's what happens every day in these courts. To the extent people say Donald Trump was getting bad treatment, all the other prosecutions up to now, indictments up to now were unusual because so many people were able to get off scot-free. Not this time."
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Van Jones says Fani Willis "threw the library" at Trump's associateswww.youtube.com
