Donald Trump did not address the multiple investigations confronting him in a speech launching his third presidential campaign.
Phelan M. Ebenhack for The Washington Post via Getty Images
Trump announced his 3rd presidential bid in the same place that federal agents view as a suspected crime scene.
His campaign could further complicate the attorney general’s eventual choice about whether to indict Trump.
With midterms over, the Justice Department could soon signal its next steps.
When FBI agents arrived three months ago at the South Florida home of former President Donald Trump, their search warrant made clear that the oceanside Mar-a-Lago estate had turned from “Winter White House” into a suspected crime scene.
But, on a November evening a week after the midterms, there was no other setting for the announcement Trump had long teased: At Mar-a-Lago, the former president confirmed Tuesday he would seek a return to the White House.
Trump’s official campaign launch set the stage for a comeback bid that will unfold against the backdrop of a torrent of legal scrutiny that is only worsening.
From the Justice Department alone, Trump faces a criminal inquiry into his hoarding of sensitive government records at Mar-a-Lago, along with a separate investigation into efforts to prevent President Joe Biden from succeeding him following the 2020 election. In court, rulings appear to have limited Trump’s ability to invoke executive privilege amid those investigations, clearing the way for at least one former administration official — and potentially others — to testify.
Meanwhile, at the local level, an Atlanta-area prosecutor is also investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and the state attorney general in New York has gone to trial against the Trump Organization on financial fraud charges.
The Justice Department has pursued its investigations undeterred by Trump’s signaling plans for a third presidential bid, and his formal campaign launch will not protect him. But his bid for a rematch with Biden could complicate decision-making at the Justice Department, which has strived under Attorney General Merrick Garland to restore its independence following the politicization of the Trump era.
Indeed, even before Trump’s announcement Tuesday, senior Justice Department officials discussed the possibility of appointing a special counsel to oversee investigations involving the former president in the event he announced a 2024 candidacy. Trump’s announcement could spur more intense consideration of making such an appointment and — at least from an institutional perspective — make the decision to charge a former president more painful for the Justice Department.
The midterm results appeared to diminish Trump’s status as the Republican standard-bearer, as several of his endorsed candidates suffered defeats and an emergent rival within the party, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, cruised to reelection. Still, Trump’s entry in the race presents a “pretty stark conflict of interest for the department” and a need to appoint a special counsel, said Randall Eliason, a law professor at George Washington University and former top public corruption prosecutor in the US attorney’s office in Washington, DC.
“This will give a degree of separation from the Biden administration that would cause the public to have some increased confidence in whatever decision is made — and that’s the purpose of the whole special counsel regime,” Eliason told Insider.
Justice Department regulations lay out specific criteria for the appointment of a special counsel, namely in investigations that create at least the perception of a conflict of interest “or other extraordinary circumstances” in which “it would be in the public interest.” Any special counsel would still report to Garland, meaning the decision of whether to bring charges would still fall with the attorney general.
The Justice Department could soon signal its next steps. With the midterms now complete, federal prosecutors are no longer bound by the Justice Department’s longstanding practice of avoiding overt, politically sensitive investigative steps before an election that could influence voters before they go to the polls.
A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment.
‘Substantial risk’
In Georgia, an Atlanta-area prosecutor similarly refrained from taking potentially explosive steps as voters in that battleground state went to the polls. But the prosecutor, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, appeared to regain momentum quickly in her office’s investigation into Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election.
On Tuesday, the newly reelected Gov. Brian Kemp appeared before an Atlanta-area grand jury in connection with Willis’ investigation. A judge overseeing the grand jury allowed Kemp to wait until after the midterms to testify, after previously rejecting the Georgia governor’s bid to quash the subpoena demanding his appearance.
In late 2020, Kemp was among the top state officials who Trump pressured to overturn Biden’s win in Georgia.
Willis’ office also appeared to make progress in Florida, where a judge ordered former Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn to testify before the grand jury. Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, and Sen. Lindsey Graham are set to testify before the grand jury later this week.
In a recent report, experts at the Brookings Institution said Trump faces “substantial risk” of prosecution in the Willis investigation.
“Additional evidence uncovered by the DA’s ongoing investigation may expand or contract the scope of conduct upon which charges, if any, may be brought. But it is critical to the integrity of our rule-of-law system, and our constitutional republic, that the investigation proceed,” wrote the report’s authors, including former Deputy Attorney General Don Ayers and Norm Eisen, who served as counsel for House Democrats in Trump’s first impeachment.
In New York, meanwhile, the longtime chief financial officer of the Trump Organization took the stand to testify at the company trial on financial fraud charges. The longtime executive, Allen Weisselberg, admitted to receiving perks — including leased cars and apartment rentals — without paying taxes on them.
The House January 6 committee has connected. the violence of the Capitol attack to Donald Trump’s public rhetoric.
Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Congressional troubles
House Republicans are poised to retake the majority next year, albeit by a slimmer margin than expected. While Republicans did not ride the “red wave,” their return to the majority would spell the end of a panel that has publicly aired damning evidence against Trump: the House committee investigating the January 6, attack on the Capitol.
In a series of public hearings and in court filings, the House January 6 committee has connected the violence of the Capitol attack to Trump’s rhetoric, including a comment on the presidential debate stage urging members of the far-right Proud Boys group to “stand by.”
In litigation involving the House January 6 committee, a federal judge found that Trump likely committed crimes — including obstruction of an official proceeding — in efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. Judge David Carter called those efforts a “coup in search of a legal theory.”
But the House January 6 committee hasn’t finished just yet.
After months of work, the committee has transcripts of more than 1,000 interviews — including with former Trump administration officials and two of the former president’s children — that the panel’s chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson, has indicated he’s inclined to release publicly. The committee could release those transcripts with a final report stitching together its findings.
At its latest hearing, the House January 6 committee voted to subpoena Trump, prompting the former president to sue the panel last week. The committee’s forthcoming report and interview transcripts could damage Trump on the campaign trail, particularly with voters who rejected his favored election deniers in the recent midterms.
Those materials could also provide new leads to the Justice Department, whose prosecutors and investigators were rebuffed earlier this year when they sought the House committee’s transcripts.
Once the committee does dissolve, the anticipated majority in the House will lack the heft Republicans hoped the midterms would deliver.
Ahead of the midterms, Republicans warned that they would wield committees to mount oversight investigations and grill the Justice Department and FBI about investigations involving Trump. But the narrower Republican majority means that Democrats will have the power, even in the minority, to hinder and frustrate some of those efforts.
And it remains unclear how fervently Republicans will come to Trump’s defense following a midterm election in which many members of the party viewed him as a drag on the ticket.