Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance urged special counsel Jack Smith to move ahead with indictments in the January 6 case as soon as possible — or it will run into the political election season, with all the complications that will bring.
This comes shortly after he moved forward with granting immunity to two of the fake Trump electors to give testimony in the case.
"As you watch people be immunized so that they are either forced to testify or voluntarily testifying as cooperators, you begin to think that the Justice Department — in this case, the special counsel — is trying to go up that chain to reach the most culpable people," said Vance on MSNBC on Friday. "You could see one big indictment with everybody in it, you could see a partial indictment. Perhaps indicting all of the lawyers ... their conduct seems to be very meritorious for prosecution. Some of them might then cooperate and get you further up the chain."
"Yeah, and there's also, in the same report, the idea that the timelines change, they're playing hardball," agreed anchor Chris Hayes. "Reading from this prosecutor's quote, 'playing hardball' with some of the witnesses in recent weeks, refusing to grant extensions for subpoenas for testimony, demanding that they go ahead and comply before the end of the month. Joyce, how does that differ from the account of The Washington Post, that initially the elector stuff wasn't even getting scrutinized?"
Vance's simple reply was, "You know, look, times change."
"There was a mood in the country following the Biden inauguration, this need to avoid really splitting the country further apart than it already was," she continued. "I think the Justice Department was very cautious. That's a fair assessment, based on the Post's reporting. But now we're up on the election time clock and the moment to get this done is now. Special prosecutor needs to indict if they're going to, or at least start indicting for January 6th before the end of summer. The political season is upon us. And although it's unlikely, unless they have some sort of extraordinary strategy here, that the January 6th case could be indicted and completed as to all defendants before the nomination process is complete. They have an obligation to move as quickly as possible at this time."
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Joyce Vance urges Jack Smith to make January 6 indictments nowwww.youtube.com
