I'll be waiting

The legal uncertainties that surround bringing charges in Florida for dissemination of national-security secrets in Bedminster leaves open the possibility that charges might yet be brought in New Jersey.

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The Constitution requires prosecutors to bring charges in the location—or venue—where the alleged criminal conduct took place. Justice Department prosecutors could not necessarily bring charges against Trump in Miami for alleged criminal conduct that occurred in another state, in this case New Jersey. But the absence of such charges in the indictment raises the intriguing possibility of another indictment to come, in a jurisdiction, no less, with a pool of jurors and judges more favorable to the government’s case against Trump.

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“Any offense against the United States begun in one district and completed in another,” according to a congressional statute, may be “prosecuted in any district in which such offense was begun, continued, or completed.”

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But perhaps Smith did not want to count on the Supreme Court to recognize Florida as an appropriate venue. Judges have not issued definitive rulings on how the law of venue applies to the national-security statutes under which Trump has been charged. [...] Smith might have reasoned that the government could lose on the issue of venue for any dissemination charges it tried in a Florida court. And that could potentially be fatal to ever bringing those charges even in the place that’s an obvious venue option: New Jersey.

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[I]t is possible, based on the publicly available facts, that Trump shared the number of U.S. troops required to attack Iran, but not the actual document outlining the attack plans. That would not make his conduct any less criminal—the law specifically prohibits verbal disclosure of such information, not just documents. But if the alleged crime was verbal communication, that crime arguably did not “commence” in Florida with the physical transportation of boxes to New Jersey.

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If Aileen Cannon, the Florida judge assigned to the case, were to seek to pocket-veto the charges before her by, say, scheduling the trial for after the 2024 presidential election, the special counsel would be able to sidestep her tactic by proceeding with charges in New Jersey.

In fact, the Miami indictment conspicuously excludes many facts surrounding Trump’s actions in Bedminster: what boxes were taken there, what they contained, how they were kept at the golf club. This silence suggests that there might be more to come from the famously hard-charging Smith and his team of prosecutors, who put together an otherwise highly detailed 49-page indictment.

Smith might still decide against bringing a separate indictment for dissemination, because such a move could be painted as overcharging. The government usually tries to avoid being seen as piling on, at least in such a high-profile matter. But if Cannon acts consistently with her prior Trump-friendly rulings, which were twice found by unanimous panels of conservative appellate judges to be both factually and legally flawed, Smith might go looking for another way to ensure accountability—and another venue where he could do so.

  The Atlantic