Fox Legal Analyst Jonathan Turley Warns: Trump Jan. 6 Indictment Needs to ‘Stick the Landing’ Or Risk Boosting Him Politically

Fox News legal analyst Jonathan Turley said that any potential indictment of former president Donald Trump over the January 6 Capitol riot will need to “stick the landing” on Tuesday morning, shortly after Trump announced that he will likely face such charges.

In a statement released on Truth Social, Trump said that he had been informed that he is a target of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the riot, and that he would likely be indicted.

In an interview with Fox’s Sandra Smith, Turley submitted that Smith would need a smoking gun outside of the speech Trump gave on January 6, 2021 prior to the outbreak of the riot. Speaking to the indictment Smith might soon unveil, Turley said that “the concern here is that the special counsel could be proceeding on a case that might be constitutionally challenged.” He continued:

If the case is built around Trump’s speech on the ellipsis on January 6, I don’t believe that it could withstand judicial review. The question is: Does Smith have something else? Something that’s a direct link to a conspiracy or effort to cause violence. We haven’t seen that. I mean the January 6 Committee in Congress came up with nothing as a direct nexus to that type of evidence.

Turley rejected Trump’s suggestion that he was being given too little time to report to the grand jury before returning to his original point when asked if Trump should consider suspending his ongoing presidential campaign.

“There’s no legal reason why he should and there might not be a political reason. Each of these indictments seems to give him a boost in the polls. I mean, this is fulfilling his narrative that there’s a weaponization of the criminal justice system,” he argued. “That’s why this indictment, if there is coming, could be so important. With Mar-a-Lago, those were classic types of charges, a classic built case. This one, they have to really stick the landing so that no one will question it, or few people would question it. That’s gonna require some very direct and strong evidence. We haven’t seen that. So if Smith doesn’t have that type of evidence and he’s moving forward largely on the speech, then I think he will fulfill the narrative of Donald Trump.”

“Smith has a reputation of stretching the criminal code, sometimes too far,” added Turley. “This is not an occasion for that.”

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