I do believe that’s why they’re trying so, so hard to distract with their endless Hunter inquiries and demonizing Biden in every way possible.
It’s the only strategy they have left: Try and create a false equivalency between the illegal acts of Trump and Biden, so that when Smith comes for the culpable ones who cooperated in the attempted election steal, they will say, “Look!! Look how political it all is!! Biden crime family!! Yaarrggh!!”
I don’t think it’s working broadly enough, though. Polls suggest the majority of voters see right through this shit. They also show a majority believe Trump committed crimes.
Ideally, this will come to pass, and he’ll launch a third-party bid to preserve his status as a “candidate” in order to maintain the protection he thinks this gives him. Dear Flying Spaghetti Monster, I know I haven’t been a very good Pastafarian, but if you could give me this one sign…
I just want you to consider that things aren’t nearly as locked up for Trump as you may suppose. I do keep up with this stuff in lots of ways, including tee vee and tons of reading various media outlets, books and articles.
I cannot believe that you can find a jury of 12 and not include at least 1 magat. And it takes only one. That and a judge who is also apparently a Trumpist. Now if he is charged in DC, all bets off. I really don’t understand making the main case in Florida. I hope I am totally wrong about this, but I don’t think so.
And Koch can throw all his money into the ring. It will be very hard to beat Trump in the winner-take-all primaries, especially with so many candidates running against him.
I decided to go the pessimism route and voted ‘no’. Even if he were sentenced to a regular jail term, it simply wouldn’t be business as usual for the facility in question. One part of it, maybe, is that it sounds like he’ll be making enough guest appearances in other courtrooms that the idea that he’ll keep out of the public spotlight is ludicrous. Sad, indeed.
Ditto, the mill of the court system grinds slowly sort of. It isn’t entirely unusual for all the motions and countermotions can take up a couple years.
My feeling is that Republican logic can best be summed up as, “We cheat, lie, and steal. So the Democrats must be doing the same.” Whether the Democrats do or not is immaterial, what matters is that this message gets out to the Republican faithful, who are more than happy to hear that. It gives them more ammo in their whataboutism, especially as regards Hunter Biden.
As to the OP’s question, if we’re thinking about July 1, 2024, then my feeling is no, Trump will not be jailed within the year. He’s a rather unique criminal defendant—a former POTUS–and I’m sure that will carry some weight, should he be convicted. With that being said, I can see him, if convicted, being kept under house arrest at Mar-a-Lago, with an ankle bracelet if necessary. No golf at his nearby golf course. No golf at Bedminster, NJ. No golf anywhere. And especially, no campaigning.
But he won’t see the inside of the big ol’ Stony Lonesome within the next year. At best (worst?), he’ll be restricted to the resort itself, and ordered to use the bathroom where he definitely stored his boxes, as the photos tell us.
Everyone? Yeah, no, I gotta take issue with that. If Trump becomes the GOP candidate, and he asserts that his election is inevitable so of course any pardon he issues should be taken seriously because he’s ultimately going to be president anyway … something north of thirty percent of the population will immediately jump on board and start beating the drum for the argument.
A fair number of them will advocate Trump’s ridiculous position simply because they want to troll the libs and see them get agitated refuting it, but a substantial fraction will get behind it because they’re full-blown moron cultists who see Trump as an inerrant prophet.
Now, I know your rebuttal is to amend the original statement: “Okay, everyone with meaningful legal authority will ignore it.” When I started writing this message, that was going to be my own conclusion, and note that the judiciary would simply need to watch for threats from the MAGA loons.
But the more I thought about it, and in a world where Aileen Cannon has a federal courtroom, are we that sanguine that there isn’t some Trump-installed judge somewhere who might be willing to go along with it? Sure, such a decision would probably, almost certainly, be reversed at higher levels.
But the point is, it’s a misstatement, I think, to flatly assert that everyone would roll their eyes at such an attempted legal maneuver by Trump. Far from it.
I’m sure there are a few Cannonesqe judges who would recognize a pardon issued by a private citizen who happens to be their Dear Leader, but they would be quickly be shot down on appeal. Even the Supreme Court would rule 8-1 against pardons issued by a private citizen.
If that’s what was meant, I missed it. But I miss a lot of things. Anyway, though 11:59 am on 1/20/25, his pardoning power is no greater than mine. You can bet your last nickel that no Republican would recognize a pardon issued by a Democratic president-elect.
OK, put it this way: If we’re at the point where a pardon issued by a candidate, or even by the President-Elect, is given any weight at all by the people for whom it’s relevant, then it doesn’t matter, because at that point we’re in a full-blown civil war.
