Will Donald Trump be indicted? If he is, what happens next?

Clip You’re listening to a Frequency Podcast Network production in association with CityNews.

Jordan Years ago now, not yet President Donald Trump said something that was intended it as a joke but has since become prophecy.

Clip Where I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters. Okay. It’s, like, incredible.

Jordan During Trump’s campaign, presidency, reelection campaign, and everything that’s come since, there have been frequent junctures at which people who watch American politics or like us in Canada have to live with the results thought that surely this was a bridge too far for the saner minds, at least in the Republican Party. You know by now that nothing yet has been a bridge too far or a tipping point. So far, it’s just Trump, and they will stand by their guy until either he goes away or democracy does. And that brings us to last week.

Clip Legal fallout following the FBI search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. The newly unsealed search warrant revealed the FBI was looking for documents connected to potential violations of statutes that make it illegal to destroy, conceal, or unlawfully remove government materials.

Jordan In the days since the FBI searched Trump’s Florida property, we have learned a lot, but also nowhere near enough. What was the FBI specifically looking for? What did they find? What did they take? What’s the ultimate goal of this unprecedented investigation into an American president? And will this, an FBI and Department of Justice investigation with connections to espionage and nuclear documents, be enough to talk Trump’s supporters and the Republican Party off the ledge? And if it’s not, then would an indictment? What about an arrest or jail time? If none of those things are enough, what does that mean for America, for her neighbours up here, and for the rest of the world? I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. This is The Big Story. Aaron Rupar is an independent journalist who covers policy and US politics. You can find his newsletter on Substack and subscribe. It is called Public Notice. Hello, Aaron.

Aaron Rupar Hey. Thanks for having me on.

Jordan You’re very welcome. Canadians need someone every so often to explain what’s going on in the Trump world.

Aaron Rupar I’ll do my best. It’s a very complicated situation right now.

Jordan Yeah, well, I wanted to talk about that first of all, because it’s been a week or more now of information kind of coming out in dribs and drabs and various documents. So for Canadians who know that Trump’s home was rated by the FBI, and maybe not much more seems certain. Can you tell me what we know for sure about that rate at Mar-a-Lago now?

Aaron Rupar Yeah, what we know for sure is that the FBI got a warrant to go in there because of allegations that a judge found credible about Trump mishandling classified documents, including documents pertaining to nuclear weapons. And you know at this point, we don’t know specifics beyond that, because in the search warrants, any sort of classified information was scrubbed from that. So it’s all kinds of general descriptions. The document that would shed a lot of light in terms of what the investigation is and kind of the broader context of the FBI’s concerns is the search warrant affidavit, which remains sealed at this point, although there is a hearing on Thursday afternoon where it’s possible that a judge could move at that point to unseal it. So a lot of the smart legal people that I read and talk to have been saying that they don’t expect the affidavit to be released publicly as long as the investigation is active, because releasing it could tip off Trump and Trump World figures. It can give them a lot of information about the specifics of the investigation, and allow them to sort of plan ahead. It’s just not something that typically happens while an investigation is ongoing like this one is. So I don’t know if we will see that anytime soon. But sadly, until we do, people are kind of guessing as to what exactly is going on here. Although we do know from media reports over the past year or so that Trump. When he left the White House. Was extremely sloppy with handling classified documents. Basically took them in a big box to Mar-a-Lago and the National Archives was trying to recover some of these documents from him and ended up being kind of a protracted process. And apparently, not all of those documents were returned as required to the National Archives. So that’s what we know right now because there are a lot of gaps in their knowledge, it’s a very easy situation for Trump’s lawyers who are on TV constantly to demagogue and to sort of frame as this overreach.

Jordan Right.

Aaron Rupar Republicans have been really harping on the fact that no president or no former president has been targeted for a search of this sort before, which they described as a raid, to make it sound particularly dramatic. But there’s kind of a dearth of facts. And so that leads to a lot of speculation, to a lot of hot takes. But it’s a touchy situation because again, given that we’re talking on an active investigation here, it’s obvious why the FBI and DOJ don’t want to tip their hand and release a lot of information publicly. But as long as they have that posture, it’s very easy for Trump World and for Republicans to kind of demonize them. And we have had a surge here of threats against law enforcement, in particular the FBI. Last week, a field office for the FBI in Cincinnati was shot up with a nail gun by a Trump supporter. A Pennsylvania man was arrested just a couple of days ago for making threats online. And so we do have this kind of very heated situation here where the lunatic fringe of Trump supporters seem to be fed up at this point with the FBI and they view the search as a declaration of war basically against the Trump movement and trump, Tucker Carlson, people of that sort have done anything but tamp this down. If anything, they’re turning the rhetoric even up.

Jordan Right.

Aaron Rupar and kind of describing this, again as like a declaration of war against their political movement. And so it’s a very explosive situation with the dearth of facts to help people kind of understand exactly what’s going on. But that’s sort of the lay of the land right now.

Jordan And we can talk more about the response from Trump supporters and Republicans in just a second. But you mentioned investigation a few times in that answer. Where is the investigation coming from? The FBI and the Department of justice. What do we know about what they’re investigating, what they’re looking for?

Aaron Rupar Yeah. So to the best of our knowledge at this point, based on what we know publicly. They are specifically investigating Trump’s handling of these classified materials, some of which, according to the search warrants had the highest levels of classification where they’re only supposed to be visible to officials in like a secure facility so that this information isn’t leaked or can’t be obtained by foreign governments, that sort of thing. So, again, we know that Trump, when he left the White House, basically took a lot of documents from the White House in boxes to Mar-a-Lago, some of which now we know contain highly classified material and so the FBI is investigating that and whether crimes were committed in terms of how these documents were mishandled. Now, that could involve a lot of other potential crimes. I mean I touched upon earlier this revelation that some of the documents the FBI and DOJ are concerned about pertaining to nuclear weapons and so there’s been a lot of speculation because Trump has been trying to sell nuclear secrets to foreign governments. Was this just a situation where he was very sloppy with documents that he should have been more careful with or returned to the National Archives? That we don’t know the specifics of that. But we do know that the investigation pertains specifically to Trump’s handling of these classified materials, which, of course, is quite ironic, given that Trump’s campaign in 2016 against Hillary Clinton was largely about demonizing her and suggesting she should be imprisoned for her mishandling of classified materials. So we’ve kind of come full circle here.

Jordan And I suppose folks in the Trump world are recognizing that irony and commenting appropriately.

Aaron Rupar Well, there’s been a lot of painstaking distinctions made by Trump supporters to try and explain why the situations are different.

Jordan How do they try to explain it?

Aaron Rupar Well, the quick and dirty of it is that the argument that Trump supporters make is that because Hillary Clinton mishandled classified information that was on a computer server that potentially could have been hacked. That was actually more reckless than what Trump did because he had these documents in his home, essentially, where obviously it would be a little bit in theory more difficult to steal them or hack them to pilfer them, essentially. Now we don’t know if that’s true. I mean, there have been reports over the years of foreign governments trying to infiltrate Mar-a-Lago, using memberships there to influence Trump administration officials. So I think the argument that because they were at Mar-a-Lago, they’re somehow more secure than on an Internet server, I don’t think that argument really holds a lot of water, but you can make distinctions like that. If you’re really interested in defending Trump.

Jordan I’m sure you remember this tweet because covering Trump involves being on Twitter all the time, but it’s about like, oh, they’ve surely got old Donny Trump now. I’d like to see him wiggle his way out of this one and Trump wiggles his way out of this one effortlessly. Is this another case of that? How will we know if it’s not, I guess is what I’m really trying to grapple with. How do we distinguish this from the 19 other things that we’re definitely going to be the end of Trump?

Aaron Rupar I think we’ll know that it’s different this time if Trump is ultimately indicted because that’s something that has not happened. There’s been, as you’ve alluded to a lot of investigations, both of a political nature with the two impeachments. I mean, there’s been a number of criminal investigations as well, including active ones currently in Georgia pertaining to his efforts to basically defraud voters thereby overturning Biden’s victory over him in Georgia and then also in New York pertaining to his business and possible tax evasion, misevaluation of his properties, that sort of thing. So there are at least two other active criminal investigations going on right now in addition to this probe of his handling of classified materials. But I think, again, if there is some sort of charge that Trump is hit with where he’s facing real consequences. Is there are certain felonies that he was convicted of them? It would bar him from running for president, which of course, has fueled a lot of speculation among Trump supporters that this is really a political hit meant to take Trump out ahead of his likely 2024 run. But that, to me, again, I think it’s going to be when we really know that this is different, is if Trump is charged by Merrick Garland essentially for crimes related to his mishandling of classified documents or other offences related to that. I think that will kind of put us into a different category than the investigations that we’ve become familiar with over the years and really heightened the possibility that Trump may actually face some form of consequences, political or otherwise, for this.

Jordan We’ve talked so far about the reaction among Trump supporters, and you’ve mentioned the reaction from the Tucker Carlson and the Fox News crowd. How have traditional mainstream, if that still applies, Republicans responded to this end and has their response surprised you?

Aaron Rupar It hasn’t surprised me, but it’s certainly been notable that the Republicans who have been willing to speak about this publicly have pretty much one and all defended Trump or at least taken the posture of boy this year seems like a politicized investigation trying to take the former president out before his presidential run. So the DOJ really needs to be more forthcoming with information about what’s going on here. So kind of defending not really necessarily defending Trump on the merits, but kind of defending the idea that there is more going on here than a good faith investigation of Trump and that’s pretty much been the lineup and down. I mean, everyone from Mitch McConnell to Mike Turner, who’s a congressman from Ohio who has been on TV defending Trump a lot in recent days, basically all of your brains can’t file Republicans have taken that pasture. And I guess that was maybe a little bit caught off guard that there weren’t some Republicans kind of willing to stake out that middle ground of saying, let’s wait for more facts to come in, this sure sounds pretty bad, it sounds like a lot of the same things that Trump criticized Hillary Clinton for, so let’s take this seriously. Instead, the posture has very much been to kind of circle the wagons around Trump. Just before I hopped on this call with you, I was watching Newsmax and they were hyping a poll that I think was just released today showing that Trump has actually jumped ten points in the polls relative to Ronda Sanchez since the FBI raid. And I think that’s kind of been reflected in a lot of the comments from Republicans to defending him. So if anything, it is kind of a sad commentary on our politics. But at least among Republican base voters, I think if anything, Trump getting rated by the FBI is actually kind of showed up as popularity because you might recall that in the weeks leading up to this. There were a lot of talks, including from outlets like the New York Times who did articles on this. That Trump’s standing with Fox News was eroding. That Ronda Sanchez’s star was on the rise and that there may have been an opening for someone to beat Trump in a Republican primary. And that still could happen. I don’t think this really changes the overall dynamics of you know where Trump stands right now heading into 2024, which I don’t think it’s a lock that he wins the Republican primary. But I have been a little bit caught off guard that instead of even kind of trying to play it safe and waiting for more facts to come out, republicans basically one and all have been defending Trump.

Jordan So I think I’m just going to ask basically what probably Canadians who are watching this from afar are thinking, which is like, from where we are now, what happens next and how far does it have left to go before Trump could possibly be indicted, charged, or arrested? Like, where are we at in the process, which I understand is probably complex.

Aaron Rupar Yeah, we don’t have a lot of visibility into that. And Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice has been extraordinarily tight-lipped. There haven’t really been leaks at all to speak of in the way that they often were during the Trump years That kind of gave us some visibility into investigations that have a lot of public interest. And there are a lot of different ways that in the United States that charges can be brought against someone. In this case, it would be possible for Merrick Garland, the Department of Justice, to directly charge Trump with criminal offences. But of course, that brings us into territory that here in the United States we have never entered into. There has never been a former president charged with crimes before. I mean, the closest that we came was Richard Nixon, who was under investigation when he resigned the presidency. But then, of course, infamously Nixon was pardoned by his successor and former Vice President Gerald Ford about a month or so after he resigned. And so this reality that we now live in of having a former president under apparently a very serious investigation, because conducting a raid of this sort is not a small decision to make. And there was reporting yesterday that Merrick Garland apparently was weighing whether or not to go forward with the search for weeks before giving the final go-ahead. So clearly it’s at a pretty serious stage and that could reflect some of the documents that Trump may have had in his possession and concerns that if they got into the wrong hands, it could be a national security risk for the United States. So we don’t really know if the urgency here has more to do with concerns, again, about the specifics of the documents or if Trump really does face kind of dire legal peril at this point. So, yes, Merrick Garland could bring charges. We don’t know if or when that will happen because he’s a responsible leader of the Justice Department who doesn’t let that sort of information leak publicly, and he has run a very tight ship there. So we don’t know a lot about the timeline or about the severity of the legal peril that Trump faces, but it’s clearly significant at this point, which does lead people to believe that it’s possible he could eventually face charges.

Jordan If and when that does happen. You mentioned what we’ve seen from his supporters and also, I guess, the more radical of his supporters, the more dangerous ones, confrontations with the FBI and death threats. What happens in that community if Donald Trump is charged with a crime, or even worse like arrested at Mar-a-Lago?

Aaron Rupar Yeah, it won’t be good, that’s for sure. Clearly, the right-wing social media platforms that Trump supporters tend to use, such as Gab and Truth Social, have been inundated with a lot of violent rhetoric over the past ten days since this raid happened. There’s already been, as we briefly talked about earlier, an attack on an FBI field office in Cincinnati. There have been people arrested and charged with crimes. So the rhetoric is really at an unprecedented level of being heated right now, and so it’s hard to imagine that wouldn’t translate to acts of violence. I know the FBI headquarters in DC. Has taken extra security precautions. They have a fence installed around the building to kind of limit access to it to keep people away. And so that, you know, again, it’s kind of an unprecedented moment in our politics where former president and presidential contender, his movement almost has some of the characteristics of like an insurgency at this point, and it’s hard to predict where that will go. But I thought it was very notable last night that Tucker Carlson, after a week of being off the air, which I think was just kind of a regularly scheduled vacation, returned to the airwaves last night. And as I kind of touched on earlier, he cranked it right back up to eleven in terms of characterizing this search of Mar-a-Lago as an attack on the rule of law and mentioning how bad things could get if trump is charged. We’ve heard similar things from trump’s lawyers, which is almost kind of making not necessarily threats, but kind of being sure to mention how bad things could get if Trump is charged with crimes as if that might deter the DOJ from going forward with them.

Jordan Right.

Aaron Rupar So it’s just in the nature of things that it’s hard to predict specifics, but I think we’ve already seen some of how this has played out with the violent threats and the acts of violence. And it’s certainly hard to imagine that if things escalated further with actual charges against trump, that there wouldn’t be more of that.

Jordan Last question is just what will you be watching for? If you could find out one thing and figure it out, that would unlock something to you, what would it be?

Aaron Rupar I’m very curious to read the affidavit, which we talk about a little bit earlier because again, that will give the public the information that we really need in terms of what exactly is going on here. Do you know what is the scope of the concerns that the DOJ has? Does it really just have to do with Trump possibly mishandling classified materials, which the United States and I’m not sure how it works in Canada, but classified materials here can cover everything from letters that foreign heads of state write to the president to nuclear secrets. And there have been a lot of criticisms of the federal government in recent years that things are over-classified, that documents that don’t need to be classified are classified, which can be kind of a legal trap for people if they mishandle them, but also leads to kind of unnecessary bureaucracy and secrecy. We just don’t know. Again, the fact that there was a rate of sorts conducted by, overseen by an attorney general who has been very cautious leads people to believe that there is more going on here than a kind of like mundane mishandling of documents that there are some real concerns about national security here. But until we can read documents pertaining to the broader picture of the DOJ’s investigation. We just don’t know. So part of me is hopeful that as a result of this hearing that’s taking place on Thursday, that will get a little more information about that. But it also, again, gets into kind of a dicey territory where you don’t want an active investigation to be compromised by too much information being released publicly. So there is kind of a fine line there. But selfishly as someone who’s just very curious about what’s going on here, I’m hoping that we can read at least a redacted version of that document to kind of fill in the gaps here with more information that will hopefully make it harder for some of these Trump world figures to go on TV and make a lot of insinuations about this being a political attack and things like that, which I suspect is not the case but because there’s a lack of information, it’s easy to say things like that. So that’s what I’m looking for.

Jordan We’ll catch up with you, maybe when it does or a little bit after and see how things are going down there. See if Donny Trump can wiggle his way out of this one. Thank you, Aaron.

Aaron Rupar My pleasure.

Jordan Aaron Rupar is the author of Public Notice, a newsletter on US policy and politics. That was The Big Story. For more head to thebigstorypodcast.ca. You can find previous Trump episodes there. We try not to cover them too much. It’s really hard during weeks like this. You can also talk to us on Twitter @TheBigStoryFPN, ask us why the hell a Canadian news podcast is covering Donald Trump. You can email us and yell at us for the same thing. The email is [click here!], and you can call and leave a voicemail 4169-355-5935. Wherever you get podcasts, you can find The Big Story. If you’ve got a smart speaker, you can ask it to play The Big Story Podcast. I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. Thanks for listening. We’ll talk tomorrow. Back to top of page