GEOFF BENNETT: Good evening, and welcome to the "NewsHour."

Former President Donald Trump says he's been notified that he's a target in the special counsel investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, signaling that he's likely to be charged with federal crimes.

In a post on his TRUTH Social account today, the former president said he received the notice Sunday night from special counsel Jack Smith, who is investigating Mr. Trump's actions in the aftermath of the presidential election, including the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Carrie Johnson covers the Justice Department for NPR, and joins us now.

Carrie, thank you for being with us.

Donald Trump said on social media today that he was given what he called a very short four days to report to the grand jury for testimony.

He said he expects to be charged, because such a move -- quote -- "almost always means an arrest and indictment."

Is he right?

What more do we know about this letter?

What are the implications?

CARRIE JOHNSON, NPR: Most of what we know comes from Donald Trump himself.

But, in many cases, targets of federal criminal investigations get an opportunity to present their own evidence to a grand jury before the prosecution asks the grand jurors to go out and indict an individual.

And it appears that's what's taking place here, that Trump's lawyers have gotten notice that Trump, if he wants to, can appear before the grand jury as late as Thursday this week.

Otherwise, the DOJ is going to proceed and perhaps seek a federal criminal indictment of him for charges related to the January 6 insurrection.

Geoff, we don't know exactly what those charges are.

We know the DOJ has been investigating very aggressively these alleged fake slates of electors from seven different swing states that were supposed to replace the legitimate electors that would have cast their ballots for Biden and Harris in 2020.

We also know that DOJ has been investigating fund-raising based on bogus election fraud claims Trump and his affiliates made.

The nature of these exact charges remains unknown for now.

GEOFF BENNETT: Carrie, what's the expectation for how the special counsel would handle both cases, a potential January 6 case, perhaps in Washington, D.C. -- we don't yet know that -- and the classified documents case, which is unfolding right now in Florida?

CARRIE JOHNSON: Remember, when the special counsel, Jack Smith, was appointed last November, he had kind of a two-part mandate.

And those were the two parts.

But Smith largely absorbed ongoing investigations with prosecutors that had been on the job and agents that had been on the job for many months already.

In large part, those same prosecutors and agents will remain on those investigations as the cases potentially go to trial.

So, Jack Smith has enough human beings to do his work in two places at once, both Florida and Washington, D.C.

The scheduling will be a little bit of a complication, as we will learn more about in the coming weeks and months.

GEOFF BENNETT: On the classified documents case, there was a pretrial hearing today where the parties involved discussed the trial date and how sensitive information would be handled.

What did we learn from what transpired today?

CARRIE JOHNSON: You know, lawyers for former President Trump basically wanted Judge Aileen Cannon, a judge that Trump appointed to the bench during his presidency, to wait until after the election, to wait until after November 2024 to hold this trial, whereas prosecutors for Jack Smith, the special counsel, had been raring to go, and they want to go to trial this December.

Judge Cannon didn't make a ruling today from the bench.

She seemed to signal that trial this year was too soon, given the complexities and the volume of classified information in this case.

But she also didn't seem to want to wait until November or December of 2024 or even early 2025 to hold the trial.

So she's going to have to try to find a time next year that things will work out.

GEOFF BENNETT: You mentioned the potential or I guess the active DOJ inquiry into the so-called fake electors scheme.

We learned today that the Michigan attorney general filed charges against 16 people who signed paperwork falsely claiming that Donald Trump had won the 2020 election as part of a scheme to overturn the results.

What more can you tell us about that?

CARRIE JOHNSON: Yes, these are very serious charges against Republican Party activists in the state of Michigan.

They include conspiracy and forgery.

Attorney General Dana Nessel says that these defendants allegedly undermined the integrity of the electoral process and broke state election law by meeting in mid-December 2020 to sign these fake certificates that they later transmitted to the Congress and the National Archives.

And Nessel apparently made a referral to the federal Justice Department of the same conduct last year, but because DOJ hasn't yet acted, she went ahead and did this herself.

We know there are at least two other states who are investigating similar kinds of accusations by these fake slates of electors, so there could be a lot more action to come there too.

GEOFF BENNETT: And lastly, Carrie, shifting our focus back to the legal exposure involving the former president, we have got a presidential election roughly 18 months away.

We have got Donald Trump facing potentially multiple indictments in Fulton County, Georgia, the special counsel indictments, the active cases in New York.

Do you sense -- do you have a sense of how the timing will align here, or is it still too early to tell?

CARRIE JOHNSON: Geoff, this is going to be a massive air traffic control problem for these judges in the federal court system and the state court system.

Trump is scheduled for trial in New York in March 2024 on those alleged hush money payments to Stormy Daniels and accounting allegations regarding those hush money payments.

We do not yet have a trial date as to the Mar-a-Lago classified documents charges.

The Fulton County grand jury in Georgia is aggressively moving, potentially acting as early as August.

No trial date there.

And then, of course, we have got to wait and see what happens in D.C. with this federal January 6 case.

It's possible the former president could be indicted four times this summer alone.

Whether all those cases go to trial before the election seems hard at this point to predict.

GEOFF BENNETT: Carrie Johnson, always a pleasure to speak with you.

Thanks for being with us.

CARRIE JOHNSON: Thank you.