indictments and upend entire administrations. on paper, the process poses more direct legal peril for people potentially around joe biden than president biden himself, who can in the be indicted by the doj while in office under policy. now, many people reminded of that longstanding rule during the first federal probe of donald trump, by then special counsel mueller, which upturned all kinds of information material and ultimately convicted crimes. but remember, that probe indicted other people, never went near trying to indict donald trump. ended in an initially private and later released report that discussed the president s actions it s not about anyone suggesting yet whether there s a crime. there s no facts on that. the point is that there s no way to indict a president under these rules.
obstacle. the house and senate are attuned to this. and so is trump. trump, if you talk to people, he s now trying to find a way to slow walk the production of his tax returns to maybe the house and senate and try to ensure that the time congress gets this is when republicans are in control of the house. the fact that treasury has these returns, doesn t that end this is classic trump. he s trying to find any way to delay. he s managed to delay it for three years to get the tax returns to the ways and means community. so whether it s with pressure on republicans or the treasury officials, he s trying to find, desperately i might add, any way to make sure that these documents get there on capitol hill as late as possible so that he can try to get this into the republican house. mueller prosecutor andrew weissmann wrote an op-ed saying te an op-ed saying -
by all accounts, it looks like special counsel jack smith is moving full speed ahead. are there any major obstacles on the immediate event horizon for him? i don t think there are a lot of obstacles. the 11th circuit cleared out what would have been an obstacle in judge cannon. that ruling obvious hi hamstrung the doj s investigation, forced them to spend a lot of time responding to her arguments to the special counsel, and now excuse me, the special master. and now that s cleared up with the court of appeals. i think he has some clear runway ahead. jack smith has some advantages that special counsel mueller never had. he had to deal with obstruction
the first point is that in many instances when you start getting to people at this level, and you get one shot typically at an interview and in many cases, these folks are either nol going to want to talk to you or have many reasons to not tell you the truth. roger stone at this point is a convicted obstructionist, a convicted liar, he was pardoned but doesn t wipe away the convictions. if you go into an interview, you want information that will cause them to tell you the truth. you want things like phone records or text messages or emails. but to your other point, the question i would ask is certainly when you look at former president trump, the crimes that he allegedly committed aren t simply those of january 6th, and they aren t in terms of storming the capitol. exactly what you said, calls to the georgia officials to find additional votes. heck, you look back at all the potential acts of obstruction that special counsel mueller laid out, you look at the potential tax fraud going on
there are a number of groups that do this and that that information was passed along by an attorney according to both the attorney and special counsel john durham at one point to the cia but that hasn t been charged. nobody has been charged with hacking. nobody has been charged with some sort of cyber intrusion into the white house. as far as where this goes next you have already seen an effort by the attorney, by attorneys for the attorney who has been charged here, michael sussman, for him to dismiss all of the factual details that were included in this filing that we are talking about here. i think we are going to have to watch going forward if there s any sort of additional information that comes into this case by way of filings not included in an indictment. why might that be the case? that is something that we typically report on so we will have to follow that. lastly, i think we will have to see when the investigation wraps up. as you said, it has lasted longer than special coun