knockout round. as jonathan said, maybe a reset now as the next game will be an elimination game. with us this morning, the washington post s jackie alemany and pulitzer prize winning columnist and associate editor of the washington post, eugene robinson. good morning to you both. yes, we are, tell me if you ve heard this before, on grand jury testimony watch. could there be an indictment? special counsel jack smith s investigation into former president donald trump for his alleged efforts to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 election expected to be back in session today. it s been two weeks since trump announced on social media he received a target letter, an indication charges could be brought in the near future. the former president could face charges of depriving voters their rights, conspiracy to defraud the united states, and witness tampering. trump posted yesterday on social media he assumes an indictment will be coming, quote, any day now. jackie, we ve all bee
trump reacting to the possibility earlier claiming in social media post the investigation is a hoax and that he is done not being joining me now, laura jarrett and former lead prosecutor to special counsel robert mueller and former u.s. attorney, joyce vance. laura, take us through your latest specific reporting an the legal questions facing jack smith s team. what we know is that the grand jury is expected to meet once again after a pretty long lull. there would been so much frenetic activity at the white house, so many witnesses coming in and out then everything stopped and went dark. that was around early may. we ve now learned, sources familiar have confirmed that they are expected to meet again this week. reporting on grand jury is always fraught because the process is secret but that s what we re able to report at
least at this moment. and andrew, give us a sense of what s going on behind the scenes. what does jack smith have to do before making a recommendation or presenting a decision to the grand jury? is there a charging statement or a decision not to charge? what have they been working on do you think? sure. well i think the first thing for people to know is that it s very typical in a case like this and frankly, it should be typical on almost any case that the defense is given an opportunity to be heard. and that would be at two levels. the defense would be able to speak with jack smith and his team about any legal, factual reasons why a case should not be brought and because ultimately even though there s a special counsel, it is the attorney general who has the ultimate authority to say yay or nay. that they could potentially appeal that and i would think
that here that attorney general garland would hear an appeal. it wouldn t be typical for him to do so under special counsel rules. so that s what we could be seeing, the reason we re seeing people coming in and out of the department of justice is for those kinds of things. then finally to your point about what to expect is that assuming those appeals don t go in donald trump s favor and jack smith would make a final presentation to the grand jury present the proposed charges, make a bit of a summation reminding them of the evidence and ask them to vote on any particular charges. by all accounts, this is something that will happen in washington, d.c. because people expect that s where the charges will be brought. and joyce vance, once that happens, these are sealed
indictments if they are going to hand up an indictment. when would we know? would there be an arraignment and would the former president show up if there were? the case will proceed like any other case. after an indictment is returned, if it is, the grand jury foreperson will appear in front of the judge who has organized this grand jury to make a return of service and then the indictment will be taken to the clerk s office where it will be added to the docket. in this case will be initiated. that will be follow at some point by arraignment. could be a matter of days or longer then this case will be in play. there will be a discovery process. there will be pretrial motions. some of that will be public but much more of it will go on in private. andrew, let s talk about the timing if there were such an indictment because there s a critical issue which is the precedent at least and for the justice department of not doing anything within six months of an election. you ve got the first