A Trump Indictment Could Be Closer Than You Think

The deadline for the special master overseeing the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago to release his final report is just two weeks away, but that deadline could become useless if the courts rule that the special master isn't even needed. Either way, a decision could be made by the special prosecutor soon after about whether or not to move forward with charges against Donald Trump, and that could happen very quickly. Farron Cousins lays out the possible scenarios.

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*This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos.

There's a deadline coming up that could dramatically change Donald Trump's future forever. That deadline is December 16th, the date by which Special Master Judge Ray dear will have to submit his final report on the documents that were in fact seized from Mar Lago by the fbi. Now that's kind of the drop dead date, if you will, because at that point, DE's job is done, right? He's gone through the materials, determined what could be considered privileged, what could not be, and he submits his report. But then from there you gotta go through the appeals process. Of course, Trump's gonna object to some of it. It could push things way down the road. So the December 6th deadline isn't exactly the kind of thing that you should get excited about. What you might wanna hold out a little bit of hope for however, is a decision from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals that appears likely to reverse Judge Eileen Cannon's decision to even have a special master in the first place. Because according to legal experts, if Judge Deer's appointment is in fact overturned and he gets kicked to the curb, that immediately opens the door for special prosecutor Jack Smith to immediately issue indictments. So technically speaking, an indictment against Donald Trump could, could be a lot closer than most people realize, but as usual, there's always a, but just because he could indict Donald Trump at that point doesn't mean it's going to happen.

But, that also doesn't mean that it won't happen. So here is basically the way things could play out. Several different scenarios here. The first one, as I explained, dairy stays in place, issues, his final report Trump's gonna appeal some things. We gotta go through that process and see what stays, what doesn't stay. That could be quick. I think it will actually go rather quickly through the court. So I don't think we're talking about, you know, pushing things back six months, but it could push 'em back two to three months depending on how many objections there are. And then from that point, we would basically enter the same kind of timeframe where Jack Smith then has a hundred percent control over it and he could issue indictments at that point. Second scenario, of course de goes away. Trump's people appeal that decision. And then we have to go through that process, which that seems to be the most likely scenario. But again, it's one that is not gonna languish in the courts forever. You're probably gonna see a very quick turnaround on that appeal just because of the high level intensity of this case.

So even if that happens, again, we're talking about two to three months beyond this. So maybe around late January, early February, at that point, we once again hit where uh, Jack Smith would be able to move forward with indictments if he's ready for that. And that brings up scenario number three that applies to all of these other scenarios, which is Jack Smith may not be ready to do it. Jack Smith has only been on the job for a couple weeks at this point. So he is got a lot of catching up to do. I'm sure they've briefed him extensively and he knows what he's dealing with, but he personally has not been on this actual case looking at evidence that you and I know nothing about, which is key. So he has to get all caught up and make sure that he has all his ducks in a row if he's even going to move forward with an indictment, which of course is another scenario.

So there's lots of things happening, but the timeframe is of course, getting smaller for Donald Trump to, you know, basically be uncertain about his fate. We will be getting answers very soon. They could come within the next month, or we could start getting them within the next two to three months. Either way, the shorter timeframe definitely does not benefit Donald Trump. Um, assuming Jack Smith is all caught up on everything, we could see some very serious movement on this before the end of the year. But I think the best bet would be late January, early February, um, unless he just, you know, is a legal wiz and absorbed everything super quickly, in which case indictments for Trump might be even closer than we think.