When DA Fani Willis Announces Indictments, She’s Going To Be Mount St. Fani

Here’s another primo reason for Special Counsel Jack Smith to get it in gear and announce his January 6th indictments before July 31t. Because if what Glen Kirschner is predicting is true, anything that Jack Smith announces after Willis takes the podium will be puny spuds.

Background. Kirschner is a 30 year veteran federal prosecutor, and a MSNBC legal analyst. As such, he’s a frequent guest on the daytime and prime shows, usually to discuss Traitor Tot’s antics, although I’m sure he has a day job too.

Kirschner has long been adamant that when all was said and done that Willis would announce criminal charges against His Lowness as well as others. As you all know from reading me, I have been on board with Kirschner, but now it appears for a different reason.

My reason was fairly simple. If you’re a prosecutor, you don’t put the county through the expense and time to call a special grand jury if you’re not planning on finding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. And when you start throwing references to the state’s RICO statutes, my nose twitches. And when the former forewoman of the special grand jury goes on television to blab, coyly predicting indictments of more than a dozen people, her empaneling a new regular grand jury to formalize the indictments seemed to me to be inevitable.

I’m sure that all of the things I just listed factored into Kirschner’s formulations as well, But then Kirschner latched onto an event that I also not only noticed at the time, but wrote about, and being a highly qualified litigator, took it to a nuts-and-bolts conclusion I had no way of knowing.

Here’s the event, and I’m sure you all remember it, not only from my writing, but because it was blockbuster news. When Willis announced her intention to form a regular grand jury to seek indictments, she also announced that she had taken the extremely rare step of writing a letter to the Chief Judge of the county, Advising him that she was ordering the majority of her staff to work from home for the first two weeks in August, and asked the Chief Judge to take the almost unprecedented step of avoiding scheduling any trials or criminal court appearances for the first two weeks of August. Her rationale was protection against possible civil unrest around a possible Trump indictment.

Which makes perfect sense. Except when it doesn’t. When Trump was arraigned at the Manhattan courthouse on the Stormy Daniels charges, the largest disruption was a hella traffic jam as they cleared the path for his motorcade. Extra security screening measures were put in place, the Secret Service and US Marshals had beefed up presence, and everything was business as usual. There was even less public disruption for Trump’s arraignment in Florida.

Here’s where Glen Kirschner runs legal rings around me. As a career federal prosecutor, Kirschner knows that once indictments are unsealed and made public, there is a specific legal timeline for the defendant to either turn himself in, or being arrested and processed for booking and his formal arraignment in court.

In Manhattan as well as in Florida, the only defendant making a court appearance for arraignment was one Donald John Trump. Which meant one courtroom and one judge. But the former forewoman of the special grand jury teased at more than a dozen indicted defendants, and at one point a few months ago, the media reported that the Fulton County Da’s office had sent out almost two dozen target letters, normally the last step before indictment.

Which is what sealed the deal for Kirschner. Let’s say that Willis comes out and announces sweeping indictments against come 15-20 people, some under state RICO charges. And once those indictments are unsealed and announced, then the mandatory clock starts ticking on processing, booking, and bringing all of those miscreants before a judge for arraignment.

And that means courtrooms. Lots and lots of courtrooms and judges. no single judge can handle all of those arraignments alone, nor can his court schedule handle all of the trials under the speedy trial act. As much as Willis may be worried about security for the courthouse, what she was also doing on the sly was asking the Chief Judge to clear the decks in the courthouse for the sudden influx of criminal arraignments of a sizeable number of defendants.

Now you know why Glen Kirschner is a legal analyst for MSNBC. You have a literal rogues gallery of suspects, including FrankenTrump, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, possibly Mark Meadows and Steve Bannon, along with the 11 fake electors from the Georgia legislature. I’m sure I’m missing others like Boris Epsteyn. And if you drag them all down, then you’re going to need space and manpower to process them all under a time limit. Jack Smith’s clock is ticking.