As I noted earlier in my story about Andrew McCarthy’s take on the alleged Trump indictment, the Manhattan DA has not yet confirmed that there is any indictment and the Trump spokesperson said they hadn’t been notified formally about any arrest, despite reports.
Alvin Bragg did reportedly send out an email to his staff regarding dealing with a potential arrest, so it still looks like they think it’s coming.
Now there’s more information both from “sources” and what appear to be improper leaks, as well as from President Donald Trump’s attorney. The leaks are indicating it’s not quite a “done deal” yet on that indictment.
According to Business Insider, there’s still one more witness who has to testify.
“There is one more witness,” a source with knowledge of the investigation told Insider on Saturday night.
The source spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to divulge details of the grand jury proceedings.
The source wouldn’t identify the witness and it’s not clear who it is. Another source said to the Insider that it was not Allen Weisselberg, Trump’s former CFO. Michael Cohen, Trump’s former attorney had told CNN that he thought he was the last witness when he testified last week. So if this is true, Cohen is wrong, once again.
But as the Insider notes, if there’s another witness, because of the grand jury meeting schedule that makes any “arrest on Tuesday” unlikely because you would need to have the testimony, plus the charging of the jury and the vote, all within a short period of three hours on Monday. According to the Insider, the grand jury is only meeting Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays for three hours each day.
Trump’s lead defense attorney Susan Necheles said they had not been notified by the DA’s office about any “arrest,” and that Trump’s comment in that regard was based on press reports not any formal communication from the DA.
Necheles called out the prosecution and the improper leaks, “This is a political prosecution and the DA leaks things to the press instead of communicating to the lawyers as they should.”
Necheles said that the DA’s office has recently been out of touch with the defense, and that this has allowed rumors and “tea leaves” to steer the perception of what is happening in the case.
“We’re all reading tea leaves because they refuse to communicate,” she told Insider. “It’s been over a week and I haven’t gotten any information from them, which is not normal,” she said.
“In normal, run-of-the-mill cases, they’ll be talking to us about what date they expect to turn in an indictment. They’ll be saying ‘we’ll let you know,'” she added. “That’s the normal conversation you would have with prosecutors.”
But nothing about this matter has been “normal” from the start. Even Bragg himself initially didn’t want to pursue this turkey of a case. Now there are all kinds of leaks that should not be happening, and they’re not properly communicating.
There probably will be an indictment this week, but how they’ve handled this is shameful. They can’t even get the process of notification right without improper leaks and being political.