A grand jury investigating Trump will be going on break for most of April according to a source
David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer, and the investigation of the hush money payment to Donald Trump in the early 2020s
Two more people testified, including a lawyer who appeared on Trump’s behalf. On Monday, the grand jury heard testimony from David Pecker, the former chairman of the publisher of the National Enquirer who played a key role in the hush money payment.
A source familiar with the matter said that the grand jury would be on break after April 5 and restart later in the month.
No. Trump posted on his social media to predict he would be arrested last Tuesday, along with a call for his supporters to protest that echoed his comments after he lost the 2020 election in the lead-up to January 6.
He’s continued to rail against Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and the other prosecutors investigating him in Washington, DC, and Georgia. He warned last week that his arrest would lead to “potential death & destruction” and “could be catastrophic for our Country.”
The president told a crowd in Texas that Democrats are using a new weapon to cheat on elections, that is criminally investigating a candidate.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s investigation into Trump had appeared to be nearing a conclusion earlier this month after the former president was invited to testify before the grand jury.
Last week, the district attorney’s investigation appeared to be nearing an end following testimony on March 20 from Robert Costello, who testified on Trump’s behalf to try to undercut Cohen, the prosecution’s key witness.
On Monday afternoon, former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker was whisked into and out of the Manhattan courthouse building. He was a central player in the hush money payment scheme, helping to negotiate the payment as then-chairman of American Media Inc. AMI has signed a non-prosecution agreement with prosecutors.
Pecker’s testimony suggests the district attorney’s office may have felt the need to rebut the testimony of Costello, who claimed Cohen had made the payment to Daniels on his own.
A victory for the special counsel’s probe of a prosecuting former vice president and an investigation of his attempts to overturn a 2020 election
The public isn’t clear about how they will be informed about the charges, and perhaps if Trump was to be indicted, he would let people know through his social media.
There have been security preparations underway for several weeks now among multiple law enforcement agencies about how security for a potential Trump indictment would be handled in Manhattan.
Bragg pledged to publicly state whether or not Trump is charged once the investigation is over.
In an extraordinary development revealed on Tuesday, a federal judge opened the way to a former vice president testifying against the president he served. A judge has said Mike Pence needs to testify to a grand jury over his conversations with Trump. It would allow prosecutors to seek potentially damning evidence under oath about how Trump pushed for a delay to Biden’s transfer.
The ruling was a fascinating development for its multiple legal and constitutional implications. It’s unclear for now at least which exact questions Pence could decline to answer under oath.
Still, the ruling is a major win for Smith, and the latest in a string of legal victories for the special counsel seeking to obtain testimony from Trump’s current and former aides.
Last week, Trump’s lead defense attorney was summoned to testify again to the grand jury, even though he had been ordered to reappear by an appeals court. It is likely that Corcoran has vital evidence relating to whether Trump hid classified documents or sought to obstruct authorities trying to get them back.
In addition to the special counsel’s pair of investigations, a special grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, wrapped up an investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election earlier this year. The Fulton County District Attorney thinks indictments will come in the case this spring.
Each development potentially peeled away another layer of protection from the former president, who has not been charged with a crime in any of the cases. Both probes being pursued by Smith are succeeding in overcoming Trump’s time-worn strategy of postponing accountability with spurious litigation and vast and questionable claims of executive and attorney-client privilege that nevertheless take time to litigate. And while any charges over January 6 could be complex and might require prosecutors to use rarely tested concepts, a potential obstruction charge in the documents case could be far easier to bring.
The January 6 ruling came the same day that a court said that Trump could not prevent the grand jury testimony of some of his top officials.
“It is interesting to me that there is this scrum over the New York case, but I really do believe that in particular, the Mar-a-Lago case, the potential obstruction of justice case, puts (Trump) in the greatest jeopardy right now,” said former federal Judge John Jones III, who is now president of Dickinson College in Pennsylvania.
Not only is Trump apparently in severe jeopardy of becoming the first former president to be indicted, but his campaign to return to the White House in 2024 – while potentially being criminally charged – raises the possibility of an extraordinary political uproar. The country would be worsened by a situation in which Trump is already fanning the flames. The Biden administration is trying to use the justice system against the ex-president at a campaign rally last weekend in Texas, which is why he folded various probes against him.
But he could also blur the legal technicalities by arguing that he stood up to the Biden administration’s Justice Department – a potentially useful weapon in a GOP presidential debate. He might have expanded the scope of the office of the vice president in establishing new interpretations of the Speech or Debate Clause. The final question of Speech or Debate Clause cases would need to be decided by the eventual appeals court or Supreme Court.
“The requirements of my testimony going forward are a subject of our review right now, and I’ll have more to say about that in the days ahead,” Pence told Newsmax’s Greta Van Susteren.
The former vice president wrote in his book that he asked his general counsel for a presentation on the procedures of the Electoral Count Act after Trump and that he then challenged the election results in Congress for the first time.
