Former President Donald Trump said Tuesday he has received a letter informing him that he is a target of the Justice Department's investigation into efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, an indication he could soon be charged by U.S. prosecutors.
New federal charges, on top of existing state and federal counts in New York and Florida and a separate election-interference investigation nearing conclusion in Georgia, would add to the list of legal problems for Trump as he pursues the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
Former United States Attorney Tom Heffelfinger, speaking to Chad Hartman on WCCO Radio, says that while it isn’t an automatic at this point, but it is a strong indicator that they have enough evidence to indict on probable cause.
"There's a very strong indication that the special prosecutor in this case has collected enough evidence to establish probable cause to indict former president," explains Heffelfinger. "It would be unusual if indictment did not follow this."
The potential charges in the case are not known, but could come in the form of defrauding the U.S. of a fair election along with potential false statements. Heffelfinger says any of those are possible, but there is one overriding charge he thinks could come from special prosecutor Jack Smith. Heffelfinger says the evidence and indictments to date point towards a conspiracy.
"The one that is sort of overrides them all is conspiracy," says Heffelfinger. "That is where you indict people in a conspiracy with the former president, and all that requires is evidence of an agreement. And it doesn't have to be a formal agreement. You can just be working together."
The case gets more complicated, especially for voters, because Trump is the leading candidate for the Republican nomination for president in 2024. Heffelfinger says that is not going to stop this case, or the case of the documents found at Mar A Lago, from moving forward.
"Will he succeed on one or maybe two of the pending charges in getting it kicked back? That's always possible," Heffelfinger says. "But not all of them. Jack Smith as well as (Attorney General)Merrick Garland, as well as the prosecutor in New York and in Atlanta, they all know about the election and they all know that Donald Trump's best, perhaps only defense, especially to the January 6th charges, the documents charges and the Georgia cases, the best defense there is for him to win the Election. This is not a defense based on trying to attack the law or attack the facts. It's a defense based on delay so that he may win the presidency again, at which point all of these cases get dismissed."
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Heffelfinger does say that by next November's Election, he expects at least one of these cases to be proceeding in trial, or at least pre-trial.
"It would be hard, especially for the federal cases, to get all of that work done in anticipation of a jury trial," Heffelfinger explains. "One of the good examples of that is the documents case, because they have to go through a rather exhaustive process of clearing all the documents that were privileged, were sensitive. They were sensitive three years ago, they're still sensitive. And so before those documents can be brought into a trial in front of a jury of laypeople and the public and the media, those have to go through a process of vetting them for classified information."
Tom Heffelfinger served as U.S. Attorney for Minnesota from 1991 to 1993 and from 2001 to 2006, appointed by Republican Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. He served as assistant U.S. Attorney from 1982 to 1988 and assistant Hennepin County Attorney from 1976 to 1982.
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