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Special counsel Jack Smith continues to take investigative steps that should reassure people who want to see the rule of law applied equally, including against Donald Trump and his allies.
The New York Times reported Wednesday that one of those steps is subpoenaing Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner to the grand jury.
According to the Times report:
Ms. Trump was in the Oval Office on Jan. 6 as her father placed a late-morning call to Mr. Pence to pressure him to block or delay congressional certification of the Electoral College results documenting Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory…. Both [Kushner] and his wife were involved in efforts to get Mr. Trump to tell the rioters to go home, and then to commit to a peaceful transfer of power to Mr. Biden.
Obviously, those witnesses — Trump's eldest daughter and her husband, both former White Houser aides — can provide crucial testimony in a potential case against Trump. And given their close relationship to the former president, any reticence they display under oath can speak volumes as well.
On that note, I’d like to emphasize a point that MSNBC legal analyst Andrew Weissmann made on the show Wednesday, about why this latest reported move is significant. Weissmann, a former prosecutor for special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation team, told Nicolle that subpoenaing Ivanka Trump and Kushner shows Smith is “really being tenacious.” Weissmann noted that “it’s no longer like in the Mueller special counsel investigation. [Trump] is now the former president. The attorney general is not Attorney General Barr."
So while we’re yet to see how Smith’s investigation will ultimately play out, those feeling burned by the Mueller investigation’s failure to hold Trump accountable have reason to believe that Smith's investigation at least has the chance to turn out differently.