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One week after his anticipated arrest by New York City prosecutors failed to materialize, former President Donald Trump has a theory on why the grand jury investigating his role in an alleged hush money scheme has suddenly and, without warning, gone quiet: They've got nothing on him.
Taking to Truth Social on Tuesday morning, Trump—who is currently under investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney's Office for campaign finance violations for paying off former adult film star Stormy Daniels in an effort to influence the 2016 presidential election—speculated the grand jury had grown skeptical of the DA's case, and was refusing to act as a "rubber stamp" for the prosecution.
Late Tuesday night, multiple news outlets reported that the panel convened by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg would not be meeting as originally expected Wednesday, marking the second time in a week the panel had canceled its behind-closed-doors proceedings without explanation.
After Trump's predictions of his imminent arrest on March 21 came and went without an indictment, Trump concluded, without offering evidence, that there was only one reasonable explanation for the delays—they simply don't have a case.
"I have gained such respect for this grand jury, & perhaps even the grand jury system as a whole," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "The evidence is so overwhelming in my favor, & so ridiculously bad for the highly partisan & hateful district attorney, that the grand jury is saying, hold on, we are not a rubber stamp, which most grand juries are branded as being, we are not going to vote against a preponderance of evidence or against large numbers of legal scholars all saying there is no case here."
"Drop this sick witch hunt, now!" he added.
Newsweek reached out to the Manhattan District Attorney's Office via email for comment.
The grand jury has continued to meet, including Monday meetings with witnesses like former National Inquirer publisher David Pecker, who played a key role in connecting attorneys for Trump with legal representatives for Daniels in arranging the alleged payments.
However, Trump's statements come amid some questions about the strength of the case, which revolve around whether Trump's off-the-books use of personal funds to pay for a critic's silence about a potential political scandal could merit fraud or an illegal contribution to his campaign.
Some legal scholars who have commented on the strength of other cases against the former president, like Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, have panned the fundamentals of any case Bragg could bring against Trump, with Dershowitz claiming in a Daily Mail op-ed last week that the most serious charge Bragg could possibly bring against Trump would be a misdemeanor.
Other articles have been written about the case's star witness, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who admitted to making the payment on Trump's behalf, potentially jeopardizing his credibility due to his willingness to engage with the news media.
But the key to charges against Trump might not be the $130,000 hush money payment he and his team could be accused of making: it could be his actions throughout the course of the case.
On Sunday, former federal prosecutor-turned-legal-analyst Glenn Kirschner claimed Trump had committed a series of crimes that would warrant new charges in the case, including the former president's publication of a number of heated posts about Bragg that could be seen as threats against an officer of the law.
Trump's former attorney Joe Tacopina—who has faced concerns his involvement would present a potential conflict of interest that could jeopardize Trump's defense—acknowledged the posts were "ill-advised."
However, Trump's team had previously dismissed Kirschner's legal credibility in prior statements given to Newsweek, saying the former prosecutor was a "notorious trafficker of wild conspiracy theories and dubious legal analysis."
"I would expect nothing more from a clout-chasing MSNBC contributor who has been shunned by the legal community at large," the statement read.
About the writer
Nick Reynolds is a senior politics reporter at Newsweek. A native of Central New York, he previously worked as a ... Read more