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The political stakes of Donald Trump’s hush-money trial are increasing
Insights from Politico, The Hill, and The Washington Post
The News
Donald Trump’s legal troubles are taking a turn. While the former president has spent the last few weeks in and out of New York’s Manhattan criminal courthouse, forced to listen to prospective jurors’ criticism and witnesses’ sensational accounts of alleged misdeeds, outside New York, Trump is having a little more luck.
On Wednesday, the Georgia Court of Appeals decided it will hear an appeal of a ruling allowing District Attorney Fani Willis to remain at the helm of Fulton County’s sprawling election interference case. Trump’s lawyers argue the case should be dismissed on grounds of Willis’ alleged “misconduct in this unjustified, unwarranted political persecution.”
The appeal hearing is expected to further postpone the already delayed trial, notching a small, but important win for Trump’s team as they seek to stall his many legal troubles until after the November presidential election.
“There’s no way this case gets to trial this year,” Atlanta defense attorney Andrew Fleischman told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
In fact, it’s increasingly likely New York’s hush-money case, in which adult film actor Stormy Daniels testified this week, is the only one of the four criminal cases against Trump that will go to trial before Nov. 5. On Tuesday, Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, delayed Jack Smith’s classified documents case in Florida indefinitely. Meanwhile, the Jan. 6 election trial is on ice while the Supreme Court mulls Trump’s presidential immunity argument.
SIGNALS
Delays could help Trump politically and legally
Polls suggest a fifth of Trump supporters would reconsider or withdraw their support if he were convicted of a crime — that’s a large enough portion of his base to potentially tip the balance in what is expected to be a coin-toss election. But that’s not the only reason Trump wants these trials to drag on for as long as possible. If the trials are delayed before he is re-elected, presuming he wins, he would be in an unprecedented position to shut the prosecution against him down, at least on the federal level. “That’s an argument for getting the case to trial before the election,” George Washington University law professor Randall Eliason told Reuters.
Trump ‘could be talking himself into a prison sentence’
Trump has been held in contempt ten times for violating a gag order on his New York trial, but the $10,000 fine may be the least of his concerns, former federal prosecutor Ankush Khardori wrote for Politico. Trump’s behavior is “clearly angering both prosecutors and the judge,” who has wide latitude in determining a sentence for Trump if found guilty, “materially increasing the odds that he will be sent to prison if he is convicted at the end of the trial.”
But jailing Trump for violating his gag order could have an undesired side effect for Democrats. Jail time could “give him yet more ammunition for rallying his base” and a much-needed fundraising boost, Washington Examiner editor W. James Antle III wrote.
Hush-money case isn’t a slam-dunk, court-watchers say
Some legal experts have argued that the novel tactics prosecutors in Trump’s hush-money case have used to stack misdemeanor and felony charges together is a “dubious legal move” that could make securing a conviction more difficult. To elevate a misdemeanor — doctoring financial records — to a felony, they need to prove that it was done to conceal another crime — conspiracy to influence the 2016 election. “Prosecutors cannot simply make up new crimes by jerry-rigging a concoction of existing crimes,” Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz wrote for The Telegraph. Not everyone agreed; New York Law School professor Anna Cominsky countered that an extraordinary case calls for unusual legal strategies. “This is that one in a million case, but that doesn’t mean that it’s selective prosecution,” she said.
