Mary Trump, former president Donald Trump’s niece, has warned that the clock is ticking for the Department of Justice and Attorney General Merrick Garland to decide on whether to indict her uncle now that the midterm elections are over.
Ms Trump was speaking on The Dean Obeidallah Show on SiriusXM, discussing the results of the midterms with the host and the much-teased possibility that the former president will announce another bid for the White House imminently.
She expressed her wish that the Justice Department would now quickly come to a decision on whether or not to indict him.
It is believed that the former president could be indicted either for taking classified national security-related documents to his home at the Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach or for inciting the 6 January 2021 Capitol riot in his final days in office.
“Are you hopeful? Not tomorrow, but in the near term, we’re going to see Donald Trump indicted for just one of his crimes — just pick any,” Mr Obeidallah asked.
“I don’t know if I’m hopeful, but all I can say is he has to be, I don’t know whether he will be or not, but he has to be because if he isn’t, then much worse things are going to start happening,” Ms Trump warned.
The former president’s niece argued that the decision whether or not to indict her uncle but have to take into account not just the amount of evidence against him, but also the actions he might take in retaliation.
“I guess it comes down to one — I guess if they feel that they have enough evidence to indict, which it would be shocking if they didn’t. Cause I think we all know that they did like two years ago,” she said.
“And two, just the — if they understand, what Donald’s about to do in terms of playing this very cynical card of, ‘If I’m announcing then any attack on me will be a political one’. Right? Or ‘Any indictment of me will be politically-motivated’. So I think the DoJ has about a week,” she added.
“They cannot wait until Donald decides to announce. So again, hopeful or not, it’s what they have to do, whether they will do it or not. Unfortunately, your guess is as good as mine,” Trump concluded.
The former president has teased a 2024 announcement might come as soon as 15 November.
In August, Ms Trump reacted to the release of the Mar-a-Lago search affidavit that led to the discovery of sensitive highly-classified national security documents at the Trump home and asked, “This should be enough, yes?”
Ms Trump, who has long publicly criticised the former president, appeared to be calling for him to be criminally indicted in her tweet.
