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Since leaving the White House in January, twice-impeached, one-term former President Donald Trump is facing an onslaught of legal battles and investigations. With the recent convening of a new Manhattan grand jury into the former president’s business, a former US attorney says the development means the situation has become more serious.
Speaking with MSNBC over the weekend, former US attorney Barbara McQuade weighed in on the recent developments with the long-running probe into the former president’s business. McQuade explained what the new grand jury that was assembled could mean.
The Washington Post reported that the new grand jury is expected to solely focus on how the Trump Organization valued its assets along with potentially voting on new indictments. The probe has already pressed charges on Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg.
“Grand jury investigations are by definition secret and so we only know little dribs and drabs that get leaked out,” said McQuade, who was the US attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan from 2010 to 2017. “And just because a grand jury is investigating doesn’t mean charges will be returned. It may be that they’ll investigate and determine that there’s insufficient evidence or no crime at all. But the fact that they’ve proceeded to this stage does suggest that the case has taken a serious turn.”
This new development comes as prosecutors in Georgia are also set to convene a grand jury as part of a criminal investigation on the former president and his allies for attempting to interfere in the state’s 2020 election results. The former president’s refusal to admit losing the 2020 election resulted in the Capitol insurrection along with other desperate attempts to stay in power.
In another tell-all book by ABC journalist Jonathan Karl, “Betrayal,” the former president, on his last day in the White House, lashed out at the chair of the Republican National Committee, Ronna Romney McDaniel. The former president threatened to leave the Republican Party and start his own. Trump threatened to leave the GOP to get revenge on the party for not being loyal enough to him.
McDaniel told him that if he left, the GOP would never win an election anymore, to which Trump said that it was why he threatened to leave. However, Trump ultimately backed down on the threat when GOP leaders told him that should he leave, the RNC will stop paying for his legal bills and disregard his email list.
