'This is a lot of evidence': Mueller prosecutor predicts Trump indictment is 'imminent'
"A hefty wall" of evidence has already been built against former President Donald Trump by special counsel Jack Smith - and more keeps coming, a former FBI general counsel said Wednesday.
Andrew Weissmann, who was a senior prosecutor on Robert Mueller's team, discussed new reports about Smith's investigation with Nicolle Wallace on MSNBC.
A Wednesday New York Times report cited Smith interviewing Donald Trump's former cyber-security chief Chris Krebs. He was the aide that called the 2020 election the safest in history as the former president mounted a conspiracy campaign that the election had been stolen from him. Krebs was subsequently fired via tweet.
Weissmann explained that Krebs is going to be a perfect witness for the prosecutors – who are investigating classified documents found at Trump's Mar-a-Lago home and delving into Trump's part in trying to overturn the 2020 election results – because he will have facts and data.
"He's going to talk about, as a Republican appointed by Donald Trump, giving facts saying there was no fraud in the election. And on the other side, there are no facts," said Weissmann. "So, it's just a wonderful example. You can add it to Brad Raffensperger; you can add it to Mike Pence. You can add it to the president seeking to get rid of Jeff Rosen, the acting attorney general, and replace him with Jeff Clark.
"It's all in place, and this is one really good building block. And when you give that litany, you go, this is going to be quite a hefty wall. This is a lot of evidence."
Wallace said that Krebs joins a list of people that worked with Trump and interacted with him directly who have said that he didn't win the 2020 election.
Former acting solicitor general Neal Katyal, also speaking with Wallace, recalled former Attorney General Bill Barr calling Trump's post-election advisers a "clown show." Barr, he said, would be an expert.
"Barr knows a lot about clown shows," explained Katyal. "That's what I think Smith is doing. He's trying to figure out why is, it in the world, that you would get rid of the one guy who actually talks sense. You just played the clip. He doesn't sound like your typical Trump person. He sounds like someone who plays it straight. That's exactly what Trump's problem was."
Wallace asked Weissmann about Smith's two cases – the Jan. 6 effort and the documents scandal – and the division between the two. Weissmann said that both cases will be brought and that the Jan. 6 case would be strong based on the information that they've collected. But he said the Jan. 6 case is much more complicated than the documents case.
Katyal summed it up by saying Trump can't have X, Trump took X, Trump hid X, Trump refused to give X back, Trump is indicted for it. Whereas the fraud for the Jan. 6 case involves a lot of pieces.
"I somewhat disagreed with the attorney general when he said this is the most massive investigation we've ever undertaken," said Weissmann. "I mean, this isn't. It's just, it's big, but it's not terribly complicated. The evidence is — this is the kind of evidence when you're a prosecutor, you're sort of like dying for this because there's so much proof.
"Mar-a-Lago is just a much more discreet set of facts. You still have to tie everything down, you have to interview all of the witnesses. But that is one, if I were a betting man to answer these kinds of questions, I would say Mar-a-Lago is going to go first. And that seems to me, I mean, I hate to use the phrase because Fani Willis has used it, it does seem imminent to me. And I think that Jack Smith will feel the pressure to bring it -- not because he wants to rush it, but I think the American people are entitled to know the answer to whether a candidate for office has committed a state and federal crimes."
After Weissmann spoke, CNN dropped a bombshell report that there was a tape of Donald Trump speaking to biographers for Mark Meadows in which he revealed he took classified documents from the White House that involved a potential attack on Iran.
See the conversation with the legal experts below or at the link here.
Former Mueller prosecutor thinks the document scandal case is more 'imminent' now www.youtube.com