Special Cousel Smith’s case is built for speed BEFORE the 2024 Election….
There is NO WAY the Georgia case is gonna finished by next November Prewsidential Election….
Drict attorney in Fulton County, Ga., Fani T. Willis, began investigating former President Donald J. Trump 21 months before Jack Smith was appointed special counsel — but they both secured indictments, covering much of the same ground, in one two-week span.
The Fulton County indictment represents a single chapter in the four-count indictment brought by Mr. Smith: the former president’s attempt to strong-arm Georgia into his win column.
But the Atlanta case, because of its use of the state’s expansive anti-racketeering law, extends far beyond Georgia’s borders to encompass Mr. Trump’s broader effort across the country to cling to power — creating an extraordinary parallel-track prosecution of a leading political figure unlike anything in the country’s history.
In a densely packed 98 pages, Ms. Willis makes the case that Georgia was not merely the site of Mr. Trump’s criminal acts, but also the hub of a Trump-orchestrated national conspiracy, abetted by the same people implicated by Mr. Smith’s team as complicit in the effort to overturn the 2020 election. Five of the six unindicted co-conspirators who were likely included in the federal indictment — Rudolph W. Giuliani, Kenneth Chesebro, John Eastman, Sidney Powell and Jeffrey Clark — were named in the indictment by Ms. Willis on Monday….
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The federal indictment treats Georgia as one of several states where illegal conduct occurred leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, but both indictments span a broad variety of activities. Those include Mr. Trump’s unrelenting effort to pressure Vice President Mike Pence into blocking official certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory, even as Trump loyalists rampaged through the halls of Congress.
One of the more surprising developments revealed on Monday was how far Ms. Willis’s investigators roved beyond state borders. Most of the criminal acts outlined in the indictment occurred in state, she told reporters after it was unsealed, but “some occurred in other jurisdictions, and are included because the grand jury believes they were part of the illegal effort to overturn the results of Georgia’s 2020 presidential election.”…
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The two cases, however, have significant differences. The most obvious is the indictment of Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s former chief of staff, in Georgia. A central figure in the events leading up to the attack on the Capitol, Mr. Meadows is conspicuously absent from the federal indictment as either a witness or defendant.
Another potentially stark difference: While Mr. Smith imposed lenient bond conditions for Mr. Trump in Washington, and for the former president and his two co-defendants in the case involving his retention of national security secrets, Fulton County officials have suggested they will process those charged as typical criminal defendants, requiring mug shots and possibly even cash bond….
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And it is likely — if not guaranteed — that Mr. Smith will proceed first, given the fact that his case involves only one defendant. The judge overseeing the trial, Tanya S. Chutkan, has also signaled her intention to move quickly, particularly if Mr. Trump keeps up his attacks on the court and prosecutors, which she said could taint the pool of potential jurors.
If the Georgia case “went first, it would be a problem for Jack Smith,” said John P. Fishwick Jr., who served as U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia from 2015 to 2017. “But there is no way the Georgia case goes to trial before the 2024 election, so short term, this overlap will not matter much.”…