Former President Donald Trump has already been indicted and levied criminal charges for one investigation in the state of New York.
Now, signs are emerging that another criminal indictment is likely to come in the state of Georgia in the near future.
The New York Times reported on May 19 that Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County in Georgia, has asked that judges keep their schedules for the first part of August clear. That, according to Glenn Kirschner, a legal analyst, is a big sign that a Trump indictment will soon be handed down.
Willis is heading the investigation into if Trump and some of his allies broke any state laws when they attempted to intervene in the state’s 2002 presidential election. Earlier in May, Willis sent a letter to 21 officials throughout Fulton County saying that she planned to have 70% of her office staff work remotely on a full-time basis for August’s first three weeks.
In addition, she asked judges who work at an Atlanta courthouse to hold off on schedule any trials for some of that time period.
This is an unusual request, legal pundits have said, and it follows weeks when Willis has written to law enforcement agencies that pending indictments could be coming at some point between July 11 and September 1. She warned them that “heightened security and preparedness” would be required for that time period.
All of this would come to suggest that a criminal indictment of Trump is coming, as it is very unlikely that any other case would require this kind of attention.
Willis has been conducting an investigation into Trump for more than two years now. It has centered on a phone call that Trump made to Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state in Georgia, requesting that he “find” sufficient votes that would flip the state from President Joe Biden to Trump during the 2020 election.
NBC News obtained a copy of the letter that Willis sent to local officials, and they reported that she didn’t give any reasons for why she sent that request.
Kirschner, though – who’s a former federal prosecutor himself – said on a recent episode of his podcast, “Justice Matters,” that the “extraordinary request [means that] a big old conspiracy indictment will be dropping in early August.”
He continued:
“And Fani Willis and her prosecutors will be occupying the judge full time for two weeks, running all of the defendants who have been indicted through court.”
The Times’ report cited a report that came out of the Georgia federal grand jury that recommended indictments for more than 12 people who were involved in the incident. Talking about the unnamed individuals who were recommended to receive an indictment, Kirschner said:
“They are going to be in court as defendants in what I suspect will be a big old conspiracy case.”
Kirschner further said he “never did anything close” to what Willis requested while he spent 30 years in the court system. He added:
“That is a signal that makes it clear to this old prosecutor that indictments are coming in early August. I cannot envision District Attorney Fani Willis asking the court to stand down from doing all other business if she was not going to be indicting people and running them through court during those first two weeks in August.”
