Special Counsel Jack Smith arrives to speak to the press at the US Department of Justice in Washington, DC, on June 9, 2023, announcing the unsealing of the indictment against former US President Donald Trump.
Mandel Ngan | AFP | Getty Images
The grand jury that could soon vote on whether to criminally charge Donald Trump in connection with his efforts to reverse his loss in the 2020 election met Thursday morning in Washington, D.C., federal court.
Multiple members of that panel were seen entering the E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse at around 8:30 a.m. ET, NBC News reported as speculation grew that Trump would be indicted this week.
A number of those anonymous grand jurors were spotted in the cafeteria and then going to the grand jury room on the courthouse’s third floor, according to NBC.
ABC News reported that lawyers for Trump arrived at the offices of special counsel Jack Smith for a meeting on Thursday morning. Neither CNBC nor NBC News immediately confirmed that.
Smith is overseeing the Justice Department’s criminal probe of Trump and his allies related to their attempts to prevent President Joe Biden from being confirmed as the winner of the 2020 race by the Electoral College and Congress. That effort was based on false claims, spread broadly by Trump and his allies, that Biden only won as a result of widespread ballot fraud.
Trump last week revealed that Smith had told his lawyers on Sunday that the former president was a criminal target of that investigation and had been offered a four-day window to testify to the grand jury.
The former president, who declined the offer, noted that such notifications are typically made before the recipient is indicted.
On Wednesday, Trump said he would testify at any trial if he is indicted.
“We’ll have fun on the stand with all of these people that say the Presidential Election wasn’t Rigged and Stollen,” Trump wrote on his social media site. “THE TRIAL OF THE CENTURY!!!”
Peter Carr, a spokesman for Smith, declined to comment to CNBC on Thursday.
Lawyers for Trump, and a spokesman for him, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Smith in early June obtained a grand jury indictment of Trump in Florida federal court on several dozen criminal counts related to his retention of classified government documents at his Mar-a-Lago club after he left office in early 2021.
Trump has pleaded not guilty in that case, which is scheduled to go to trial next year.
He has accused Smith and the DOJ of charging him and investigating him in an effort to harm his chances of winning the 2024 Republican presidential nomination and defeating Biden.
This is breaking news. Check back for updates.