Of all the cases against Trump, I remember most experts believed the hush money case to be the weakest one against him. Thus far it’s the only one he’s been convicted of. Neither the January 6th nor the documents case are going to be tried before the election. Those will be great ones to watch if Trump loses the election.
But I’d be just as happy if, by kicking the can down the road as far as he has, the public loses interest in the case. Trump would hate it if the news just gave us a little blurb about it when something newsworthy happens (ie the case moving into a different phase: jury selected/arguments/deliberations etc) instead of continuing to get all the fanfare he thinks he’s entitled to.
And, to be fair, with how much he’s trashed just about every media outlet, including or especially Fox, I’d hope they’d be ready to move on as well.
I hope people remember that the minute he loses the election, his political career is over and there’s little to no reason for anyone, politician or news outlet, to treat him differently than any other random person. But unfortunately, I think it’s going take some time for people to realize there’s no reason to suck up to him anymore.
And this is why I think it’s to his benefit to understand, even if his ego won’t allow it, that he might not win the election and it would make sense to start trying to wrap these cases up sooner rather than later. Republican nominee for President of the United States carries a lot more weight than former president.
And that is why I’m keeping an eye on this case.
After the election, the others become relevant, but probably only if Trump loses.
What has he said or done to back this statement up? IMO he is clearly an unbiased judge who wants to see a felon tried and punished by the people of New York under the law, under the principle of equal treatment under the law. Everything he has said or done has backed this up
He may be forced to conclude that is not possible under the law as defined by the the goddamned United states supreme court who have decided equal treatment under the law only applies to suckers and losers who don’t appoint SCOTUS judges. But if that happens he’ll be just as pissed as the rest of us, it won’t be a case of “phew I finally have a reason to let Trump off before the election”.
I concur I think their immunity ruling was more about their support for the unitary executive theory than it was about Trump. However I have the feeling that another influence on their decisions is the desire at least by Roberts not to become king makers as far as the presidential election goes. So this means not throwing Trump off the ballots and probably not putting him in jail before the election is over.
Yet that’s exactly what SCOTUS did in their decision, allowing the current and all future Presidents to do anything SCOTUS lets them, without criminal consequences. And if the POTUS finds a need to be persuasive, he/she can just dispatch a military unit to “protect” SCOTUS while they decide on the criminality of any actions.
It looks like he wants to move it to federal court so that he can have the case squashed after he is elected.
Not that the New York State Court judge needs any help, but he now has a federal district court decision to rely on. THhs effort might have hurt Trump’s chances slightly. (I’d say they were close to zero anyway though)
Hellerstein also held that his July 2023 conclusion he had made that removal of the case was not warranted — which followed briefing and an evidentiary hearing — remained the same because “the hush money payments were private, unofficial acts, outside the bounds of executive authority.”
I’m sure that Trumps lawyers will next file to the Supreme court, probably late on the 17th so as to cause maximum delay.
I
He won’t be elected. At least if you ask me. He has reverse momentum.
Momentum is a vector quantity: it can be negative.
But they have made clear that precedent does not rule. So they are just ruling on cases. If Trump wins, and Biden isn’t in a complete state of mental and physical collapse, I expect the Justice Department to indict the new former president, and for SCOTUS to allow it.
Have you a specific charge in mind?
This was always been his aim, this is about the fifth time he’s asked for it IIRC. In fact if I’m reading the analysis right this time they didn’t just tell him to sod off, they made it so he needs permission from the court to ask again.
At this point I think the immediate concern is getting elected. If he’s elected president, he can probably deal with state charges by delaying his sentence or something. He wants to push the sentencing back to sometime after the election. This is just a delaying tactic.
No and I’m sure Trump doesn’t either. Not because he isn’t going to do that, he’s just going to tell whichever amoral human vermin he selects for AG to come up with something.
Though can he? I mean absent SCOTUS (or some Aileen Cannon type lurking among the appeal judges) pulling something out of their collective butts (not something I’d rule out) what legal basis is there for delaying or cancelling a state felony sentence just because the felon became POTUS?
I don’t mean finding some spurious non-POTUS related reason to appeal the sentence (which will unfortunately be enough to delay going to prison past the election), I mean specifically because he becomes president.
I think trying to keep the president of the United States locked up in a state prison would cause some sort of constitutional crisis. As with many things involving Trump, such a thing is unprecedented and I don’t know if anyone really knows how things would shake out. Maybe we’d just end up with President Vance?
The legal basis that Trump has made up (and has received an unfortunate amount of SCOTUS support for thus far): if he is President, there are no laws that apply to him. He will treat his conviction like he treats his memory of E. Jean Carroll and he’ll just say it never happened even though he knows damn well he is guilty. Once he has the power to declare himself above the law it is the first and foremost thing that he is going to do. Doesn’t apply to state law? Doesn’t matter. What are they going to do about it?
It shouldn’t. We have a legal and political system based on written laws to apply the same to anyone. There is nothing written down in the law or constitution that says someone convicted of a state shouldn’t go to prison if they elected POTUS. So they should go to prison.
But given everything that has occurred in Trump’s prosecutions I am not that confident it will happen. But it absolutely should be the way it works.