Donald Trump’s lawyers sent a strange letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland two weeks ago, requesting a meeting “to discuss the ongoing injustice that is being perpetrated by [special counsel Jack Smith] and his prosecutors.” The former president’s defense counsel was, in fact, welcomed at the Justice Department this week for a conversation — Garland did not attend — though it apparently didn’t go as well as the Republican hoped.
Shortly after the meeting wrapped up, Trump threw an online tantrum. Last night, we received some additional context that helps explain why he unraveled. NBC News reported:
Trump’s attorneys were told at Monday’s meeting in Washington, D.C., with prosecutors at the Justice Department that Trump is a target of the classified documents investigation, according to two sources briefed on the meeting.
At first blush, this might not seem especially surprising. Special counsel Jack Smith and his office have been pursuing this case for months, and it’s been widely assumed that the former president was and is at the center of the investigation. By this reasoning, didn’t everyone already know that Trump was a target of the probe?
The angle to keep in mind, however, is that in the world of criminal prosecutions, “target” is a term of art. As a separate NBC News report explained overnight, “There are three general categories in criminal investigations: a witness (someone with relevant information), a subject (someone whose conduct is within the realm of the grand jury’s work) and a target (someone prosecutors believe committed a crime).”
Justice Department guidelines encourage prosecutors to notify targets in advance of filing charges — and those who receive target letters are often indicted.
Or put another way, the fact that Trump’s lawyers received such a notification on Monday was not at all good news for the Republican. A Politico report added, “The recent moves have signaled that Smith’s probe was nearing…
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