July 25, 2023

Sure sounds like the journalists have gotten a heads up about an indictment vote today:

"Meanwhile, the grand jury convened by special counsel Jack Smith will meet today in Washington to continue its work on the probe into Donald Trump's effort to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 election," Willie Geist said.

"It is possible the jury could vote today on whether to indict the former president. The panel normally meets on Thursdays as well, so it could be then. Let's bring in NBC News justice and intelligence correspondent Ken Dilanian. Good morning. What are you hearing?"

"We're getting a lot of smoke signals, and it's hard to know exactly how to interpret them, but I think you're right, it is very possible there could be a vote on an indictment today," Dilanian said.

"It's also possible this could push a little bit because, let's not forget, Hunter Biden is going to plead guilty to the charges in his case on Wednesday in Delaware. I'm just throwing this out there, but it could be possible that there's some people thinking it wouldn't be a great idea to have all this Trump news erupting on a day when Hunter Biden is facing justice because it would be inevitable complaints that that was a setup when, in fact, of course, it probably wouldn't be."

Wait, what? Look at how clumsily Dilanian planted that rumor! Wonder who fed that to him? By describing it as a possible setup, he primed the conspiracy crowd.

Jonathan Lemire wanted to talk about who else besides Trump could face an indictment here.

"We keep hearing names like Mark Meadows or Rudy Giuliani or other Trump allies. Now, we only know of Trump himself because he told us, received a target letter, but is there a sense -- we know the investigation is still moving forward. We've been talking about it this morning. They're still bringing people in and out of the courtroom there. Could we see other names, others in Trump's orbit also face indictments in the days or weeks ahead?" he asked.

"Jonathan, it is a possibility. It is a perplexing mystery because we've been beating the bushes since Donald Trump announced he'd gotten a target letter, trying to determine whether anyone else involved in the investigation had gotten one. We've not been able to confirm anyone has, including likely suspects including Jeffrey Clark, the former Justice Department official, John Eastman, the former lawyer who is advising Trump on the fake electors' scheme, both of whom had their phones seized by federal agents, so right in the crosshairs," Dilanian said.

"There are a lot of people who believe this will be a conspiracy indictment filled with names, other names besides Donald Trump. Obviously, there were a group of people who were scheming to overturn the 2020 election in a lot of different ways. they were bringing proposals to the White House and communicating among each other. They were putting pressure on state officials.

"As you said, that includes Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Jeff Clark and other names that our viewers probably are less familiar with. But you know, it's also possible that the Justice Department has decided that they're only going to charge Donald Trump for strategic reasons. You know, there were some people that thought it was a mistake to bring that indictment in Florida against against Walt Nauta, the valet and butler, and the former president of the United States, that there was something odd about that. Obviously in that case, they chose to indict both men.

"There's a lot of evidence suggesting that other people are culpable in the sorts of charges that we be believe are on the table with the former president," he said.

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