Thread by @PalmerReport

Fulton County DA would only have met with Trump’s lawyers for two reasons:

1) “We’ve dropped the case”

2) “We intend to indict Trump, feel free to give us any evidence that could change our mind”

Trump’s bonkers angry response means it’s certainly the latter. But there’s more.

Trump and his lawyers obviously came away from the meeting with the expectation that he’ll be indicted. Coupled with today’s AP report that the charging timeframe will be made in the first half of this year, now we have a timeframe for it.

Things can still theoretically fall through. But if you’re a District Attorney you don’t inform a former U.S. President’s criminal defense attorneys that you intend to indict him, unless you 100% intend to indict, and you’re as certain as can be that you’ll get a conviction.

Also, it was previously reported that the Fulton DA is criminally investigating Rudy Giuliani, Lindsey Graham, and Mark Meadows for election crimes alongside Trump. Did the DA also meet with their lawyers? If so, it would mean they’re all on track for indictment as well.

Meadows recently asked the Supreme Court to make an expedited decision on executive privilege, which we flagged as odd. Why the hurry, especially on a case he’s almost certain to lose. Did he think DOJ indictment was imminent, and was trying to decide whether to cut a deal?

Now we’re left to wonder if Meadows is trying to get a swift ruling on privilege because the Fulton DA is breathing down his neck and he’s trying to figure out whether he’ll need to flip on Trump / others in the Georgia case.

Even though the Fulton DA just signaled that the Trump indictment is still at least a couple / few months out, she could be planning to indict Meadows etc sooner, in an effort to get one or more of them to flip on Trump. This is usually how these things go.

But all we really know is that the Fulton DA has decided to go past the point of no return with Trump. She’s (knowingly) making herself a target of Trump’s lawyers, Trump’s political henchmen, right wing media, etc. You only do that if you’re going all the way and expect to win.

Another key angle: the new Manhattan DA just took office last week, and said the criminal case against Trump will be a personal focus, in what *appears* to be a nearly complete grand jury case. Now the Fulton DA is signaling her own timeframe for indicting Trump.

The reality is that one DA will indict Trump first and the other second, there will be jurisdictional matters, and so on. So will the two DAs race each other to handcuff Trump first, or are they coordinating their timelines and moves? No idea. Watch for clues going forward.

This also comes as the 1/6 committee keeps signaling that it’ll refer Trump to the DOJ for criminal prosecution after it’s upcoming public hearings. But there’s no known timeline for that, and it’s always felt like the DOJ would indict Trump after the states, if it does at all.

Now that we have de facto confirmation Trump will be indicted in Georgia, the defeatists will insist more loudly than ever that the trial jury will be rigged or whatever. But these baseless doomsday conspiracy theories reveal that even defeatists now expect Trump to be indicted.

It’s also notable that Trump didn’t publicly reveal that the Fulton DA is planning to indict him; he merely ranted generically about how her political party wants to put everyone in prison. So Trump, though enraged, didn’t want the public to know Fulton is going to indict him.

For that matter, nor did Trump try to falsely announce that the Fulton DA had decided not to indict him.

Trump’s lawyers previously got the media to print a false story about how the Manhattan DA had decided not to indict him. Why not use that same dishonest strategy here?

The Manhattan case was different in that it was already out in the open, Weisselberg was about to be indicted, and there was something to imminently push back against.

But Trump didn’t do that with Fulton. The meeting was 3 weeks ago. He had to know the real story would surface.

Perhaps Trump is finally scared enough to follow sound legal advice. Any adult lawyer would surely tell Trump that his only narrow hope of acquittal at trial is if he stops acting like Trump and starts taking the criminal justice process seriously.

But Trump has never followed good legal advice for long. And now that the Fulton DA has beaten him to the punch by getting the accurate story out there anyway, expect Trump to go incoherently ballistic this week. Unless he’s truly too mentally broken to even fight back anymore.

Powerful and wealthy people get away with their crimes by not getting indicted to begin with. They find a way to avoid ending up in the situation that Trump is in now, where the grand jury process is all out in the open and it’s too late to secretly make it just go away.

Once the wealthy and powerful do get indicted, particularly in a case where there’s enough public interest that it can’t just go under the rug, they tend to go down for it. Trump has been getting away with crimes for 50+ years – but he’s never been in this situation until now.