Ex-prosecutor flags potential legal reckoning for Trump 'enablers': 'I think you indict'

Former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance says the officials carrying out President Donald Trump's agenda could face criminal investigation once he leaves office — though she framed it the way a career prosecutor would, not as a foregone conclusion.

Vance, the former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, laid out her thinking in a wide-ranging conversation with journalist John Harwood posted to her Civil Discourse Substack.

Harwood pressed her on a blunt question: with laws being broken "every single day," will the people breaking them on Trump's behalf eventually face prosecution — and should they? He noted that Steve Bannon had reportedly warned a room of allies that if they lose the next couple of elections, many of them, himself included, are "going to jail."

Vance, who quipped that the next attorney general would be "somebody splendid and spectacular who is not named Joyce Vance," said she would treat it like any other public-corruption matter. As U.S. Attorney in Birmingham, she said, her office investigated wrongdoing by convening senior prosecutors and FBI agents — and crucially, going in without "a foregone conclusion." If the facts warranted it, she added, "we prosecute them."

The same standard, she argued, should apply at the end of this administration. She said she once kept a running list of crimes she believed would need to be prosecuted, but eventually "ran out of bandwidth for it."

Vance then flagged what she sees as the real coming fight: enablers trying to stretch the Supreme Court's presidential immunity ruling to cover themselves. She raised the prospect of a figure like Bannon claiming "derivative executive immunity" — arguing he is shielded because he was advising Trump. People who "may be due to be prosecuted," she predicted, will try to assert that expansion, and it will become "a real flashpoint in the courts."

She made clear she has little patience for the argument, saying the courts have already handed Trump and "his cronies" more legal benefit than they deserve.

Pressed on whether a future administration should simply move on to avoid further polarizing the country, Vance pushed back. She acknowledged that genuine prosecutorial discretion exists — a frail, elderly defendant, or cases better left to state authorities — and that some argue the smarter move with a political wrongdoer is to secure a resignation rather than risk a messy trial with no guaranteed outcome.

But she also said she is "not a fan" of prosecutors playing political analyst and passing on cases to keep the country from dividing.

"If the former president commits a crime, if the evidence is strong," and serious career prosecutors believe a conviction would survive appeal, she said, "then I think you indict."