Four-time indictee Donald Trump had an urgent message to share with Americans Thursday morning.
"None of these trials should be allowed to begin prior to the Election," Trump tweeted, complaining that they had all been orchestrated by "Crooked Joe Biden" and "Radical Left Lunatics."
Trump's emphatic plea to suspend all of his trials until after voters cast their ballots next year reveals his sheer terror at looking utterly powerless to his brainwashed cult followers who deem him omnipotent and his actions unimpeachable.
Over the coming year, Trump is facing a world of hurt stemming from four criminal cases, but the legal consequences of those lawsuits aren't nearly so important to him as the political peril of looking weak in advance of the 2024 election.
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"I don't think you can overstate how devastating it is for Trump to have to be a defendant in a trial," observed David Alan Sklansky, a professor at Stanford Law School. Sklansky was taking part in a roundtable discussion on the “Talking Feds” podcast exploring Trump's federal indictment for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election.
"His whole thing is acting powerful, acting the big man, and you can't do that as a criminal defendant sitting in the courtroom while lots of other people talk about you," Sklansky continued, calling it a "nightmare" for Trump. "I think for him and his lawyers, the whole ballgame here is delay."
If timing is of the essence, then special counsel Jack Smith’s laser-focused bid to convict Trump, and Trump alone, of coordinating an effort to block the peaceful transfer of power and defraud the United States of America meets the moment. Charges against Trump's co-conspirators can be brought later, but for now Smith is racing against time to hold Trump accountable for his actions before the 2024 election—a fortification against the possibility that a Trump victory would delay justice indefinitely.
While Trump's lawyers will surely pull out all the stops to push back the Jan. 2 trial date Smith is seeking, the D.C. court overseen by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan is likely the ideal venue for seeking swift action in the case. Chutkan has already handled dozens of Jan. 6 cases, is intimately familiar with the details of the event, and will likely be eager to usher through a case that is arguably the most important legal proceeding in U.S. history as quickly as judicially possible.
And while Trump's lawyers will surely file a boatload of motions aimed at delaying the trial, those motions will also receive immediate attention.
"Trump's cases are not going to have that usual, ‘Hey, there's a pending motion, let's put it on the top of the pile,’" defense attorney Danny Cevallos noted on the “Talking Feds” podcast. "As much as they'll file a flurry of motions that will require a ton of research, they're also going to be prioritized in a way that other defendants are not."
The potential speed of Smith's narrowly tailored federal case serves as the perfect counterpart to the sprawling racketeering charges against Trump and 18 co-conspirators for attempting to overturn the 2020 election. Those charges are being prosecuted by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in Cobb County, Georgia.
Though Willis hopes to be in court by March, that goal seems impossibly fast for a case involving evidence gathered over two-and-a-half years. The case involves 19 defendants with diverging interests, all of whom will be represented by a raft of attorneys angling to outmaneuver not only Willis but each other on behalf of their clients. Many experts believe litigating the case by November 2024 is a long shot at best, and could easily take years. In fact, one defendant, former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, is already seeking to move the case out of Georgia state court to a federal venue.
But the beauty of Willis' efforts to prosecute an entire ring of criminals is its righteous nature, as Georgia State University law professor Clark Cunningham told The Washington Post.
“He couldn’t have done it on his own,” Cunningham said of Trump and the entourage of attorneys, political operatives, and Republican officials who sought to help him steal the election. All of them must be held accountable, Cunningham added, “because that gives us a real chance of deterring this in the future.”
One underappreciated advantage of targeting so many defendants at once is the fact that at least several of them will likely seek deals to lessen both their sentences and their accumulating legal fees. Trump may be raising millions to cover his costs, but he's simultaneously stiffing others.
Chief among them is Rudy Giuliani, who CNN reports traveled to Mar-a-Lago in April to make a personal appeal to Trump to foot his legal bills, already seven figures strong and growing. Trump declined, to no one’s shock but Giuliani's.
Giuliani's sidekick in his conspiracy road show, attorney Jenna Ellis, now reportedly finds herself in the same boat. That alone could be enough to make a transactional player like Ellis consider flipping, if she hasn't already.
Bottom line: The Georgia case is going to be a legal thriller for the ages that eventually could yield a televised court case garnering the type of national interest not seen since the O.J. Simpson trial.
And even if it doesn't reach court before November 2024, it will still have political consequences. Although the Georgia case is unlikely to shake any MAGA cultists loose, it will matter on the margins, explained anti-Trumper Tim Miller, co-host of The Bulwark's “The Next Level” podcast:
As Miller concluded, "It's tough to be the alpha male when you're surrendering."
Taken together, the federal conspiracy case solely targeting Trump and the ambitious racketeering case sweeping up Trump and an array of his cronies (and perhaps even spawning future lawsuits) are quite possibly a liberal dream.
The pair could work in concert to wound Trump at the ballot box in 2024 while slowly but surely meting out justice to a high-profile ring of people who conspired to take down American democracy purely for personal gain.
With a little luck and a lot of hard work, the short-term electoral consequences along with the long-term legal ramifications could help cleanse a Republican Party currently in thrall to Trump and rid the nation of his MAGA cult.
American political parties might often seem stuck in their ways, but they can and in fact do change positions often. Joining us on this week's episode of "The Downballot" is political scientist David Karol, who tells us how and why both the Democratic and Republican parties have adjusted their views on a wide range of issues over the years. Karol offers three different models for how these transformations happen, and explains why voters often stick with their parties even after these shifts. He concludes by offering tips to activists seeking to push their parties when they're not changing fast enough.
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"None of these trials should be allowed to begin prior to the Election," Trump tweeted, complaining that they had all been orchestrated by "Crooked Joe Biden" and "Radical Left Lunatics."
Trump's emphatic plea to suspend all of his trials until after voters cast their ballots next year reveals his sheer terror at looking utterly powerless to his brainwashed cult followers who deem him omnipotent and his actions unimpeachable.
Over the coming year, Trump is facing a world of hurt stemming from four criminal cases, but the legal consequences of those lawsuits aren't nearly so important to him as the political peril of looking weak in advance of the 2024 election.
Campaign Action
"I don't think you can overstate how devastating it is for Trump to have to be a defendant in a trial," observed David Alan Sklansky, a professor at Stanford Law School. Sklansky was taking part in a roundtable discussion on the “Talking Feds” podcast exploring Trump's federal indictment for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election.
"His whole thing is acting powerful, acting the big man, and you can't do that as a criminal defendant sitting in the courtroom while lots of other people talk about you," Sklansky continued, calling it a "nightmare" for Trump. "I think for him and his lawyers, the whole ballgame here is delay."
If timing is of the essence, then special counsel Jack Smith’s laser-focused bid to convict Trump, and Trump alone, of coordinating an effort to block the peaceful transfer of power and defraud the United States of America meets the moment. Charges against Trump's co-conspirators can be brought later, but for now Smith is racing against time to hold Trump accountable for his actions before the 2024 election—a fortification against the possibility that a Trump victory would delay justice indefinitely.
While Trump's lawyers will surely pull out all the stops to push back the Jan. 2 trial date Smith is seeking, the D.C. court overseen by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan is likely the ideal venue for seeking swift action in the case. Chutkan has already handled dozens of Jan. 6 cases, is intimately familiar with the details of the event, and will likely be eager to usher through a case that is arguably the most important legal proceeding in U.S. history as quickly as judicially possible.
And while Trump's lawyers will surely file a boatload of motions aimed at delaying the trial, those motions will also receive immediate attention.
"Trump's cases are not going to have that usual, ‘Hey, there's a pending motion, let's put it on the top of the pile,’" defense attorney Danny Cevallos noted on the “Talking Feds” podcast. "As much as they'll file a flurry of motions that will require a ton of research, they're also going to be prioritized in a way that other defendants are not."
The potential speed of Smith's narrowly tailored federal case serves as the perfect counterpart to the sprawling racketeering charges against Trump and 18 co-conspirators for attempting to overturn the 2020 election. Those charges are being prosecuted by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in Cobb County, Georgia.
Though Willis hopes to be in court by March, that goal seems impossibly fast for a case involving evidence gathered over two-and-a-half years. The case involves 19 defendants with diverging interests, all of whom will be represented by a raft of attorneys angling to outmaneuver not only Willis but each other on behalf of their clients. Many experts believe litigating the case by November 2024 is a long shot at best, and could easily take years. In fact, one defendant, former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, is already seeking to move the case out of Georgia state court to a federal venue.
But the beauty of Willis' efforts to prosecute an entire ring of criminals is its righteous nature, as Georgia State University law professor Clark Cunningham told The Washington Post.
“He couldn’t have done it on his own,” Cunningham said of Trump and the entourage of attorneys, political operatives, and Republican officials who sought to help him steal the election. All of them must be held accountable, Cunningham added, “because that gives us a real chance of deterring this in the future.”
One underappreciated advantage of targeting so many defendants at once is the fact that at least several of them will likely seek deals to lessen both their sentences and their accumulating legal fees. Trump may be raising millions to cover his costs, but he's simultaneously stiffing others.
Chief among them is Rudy Giuliani, who CNN reports traveled to Mar-a-Lago in April to make a personal appeal to Trump to foot his legal bills, already seven figures strong and growing. Trump declined, to no one’s shock but Giuliani's.
Giuliani's sidekick in his conspiracy road show, attorney Jenna Ellis, now reportedly finds herself in the same boat. That alone could be enough to make a transactional player like Ellis consider flipping, if she hasn't already.
Bottom line: The Georgia case is going to be a legal thriller for the ages that eventually could yield a televised court case garnering the type of national interest not seen since the O.J. Simpson trial.
And even if it doesn't reach court before November 2024, it will still have political consequences. Although the Georgia case is unlikely to shake any MAGA cultists loose, it will matter on the margins, explained anti-Trumper Tim Miller, co-host of The Bulwark's “The Next Level” podcast:
As Miller concluded, "It's tough to be the alpha male when you're surrendering."
Taken together, the federal conspiracy case solely targeting Trump and the ambitious racketeering case sweeping up Trump and an array of his cronies (and perhaps even spawning future lawsuits) are quite possibly a liberal dream.
The pair could work in concert to wound Trump at the ballot box in 2024 while slowly but surely meting out justice to a high-profile ring of people who conspired to take down American democracy purely for personal gain.
With a little luck and a lot of hard work, the short-term electoral consequences along with the long-term legal ramifications could help cleanse a Republican Party currently in thrall to Trump and rid the nation of his MAGA cult.
American political parties might often seem stuck in their ways, but they can and in fact do change positions often. Joining us on this week's episode of "The Downballot" is political scientist David Karol, who tells us how and why both the Democratic and Republican parties have adjusted their views on a wide range of issues over the years. Karol offers three different models for how these transformations happen, and explains why voters often stick with their parties even after these shifts. He concludes by offering tips to activists seeking to push their parties when they're not changing fast enough.
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