Donald Trump’s latest indictment sets the stage for a hugely divisive and potentially explosive mash-up of courtroom drama and campaign mayhem as juries and voters race to decide the future of the former US president.
Precisely how the next year will play out remains uncertain on both the legal and political fronts, but the stakes for the 77-year-old Trump couldn’t be higher.
Another indictment expected
Trump has been charged in three criminal cases and an indictment looms in a fourth.
The former president is expected to be indicted shortly over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election result in Georgia.
The probe was sparked by Trump’s January 2, 2021 phone call to Georgia election officials during which he pressured them to “find” the 11,780 votes that would reverse his defeat to Democrat Joe Biden in the southern state.
The trials
Trump is scheduled to go on trial in New York in March over hush money payments made to a porn star on the eve of the 2016 election.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has indicated, however, that he would be amenable to moving the date to accommodate the two federal prosecutions — although the final decision is up to the judge.
Trump is to go on trial in Florida in May on charges of mishandling top secret government documents after leaving the White House.
But the far more serious case is the one lodged against him by special counsel Jack Smith for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election.
A date for the trial, which is to be held in Washington, is to be set at an August 28 hearing before US District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan.
Trump’s attorneys are expected to seek to delay the conspiracy trial as long as possible — ideally, from his team’s perspective, until after the November 2024 election.
Ty Cobb, who served as a White House special counsel under Trump but has since turned against him, told CNN that kind of lag is unlikely.
Chutkan will seek to move the case “expeditiously,” Cobb said, while at the same time ensuring that Trump’s rights as a defendant are protected.
“I do think this case could get to trial shortly after the first of the year and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it being the first one on the docket,” Cobb said.
He said he expected prosecutors would need “somewhere in the neighborhood of four to six weeks to put on their case.”
The trail
Trump has alleged that the various charges brought against him are an attempt by Biden — his likely 2024 opponent — to hamstring his White House campaign.
“My political opponent has hit me with a barrage of weak lawsuits… which require massive amounts of my time & money to adjudicate,” he said on his Truth Social platform.
“It is Election Interference, & the Supreme Court must intercede.”
Trump’s myriad legal woes do not appear so far, however, to have put a dent in his rock-solid support among Republican voters and his bid for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
Trump leads his closest challenger — Florida Governor Ron DeSantis — by 54 percent to 17 percent in a recent New York Times/Siena College poll.
The Republican caucus and primary contests to select the party’s standard-bearer for the 2024 election kick off in January, with the nominating convention to be held July 15-18 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
The various criminal trials could result in Trump spending as much, if not more, time in court as he does on the campaign trail.
“We’ve never really seen a leading contender for a major political party try to campaign while under multiple indictments so in truth we don’t really know how this’ll all pan out,” said Steven Schwinn, a law professor at the University of Illinois Chicago.
Daniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches at Columbia University, said Federal Court Rule 43 requires that a defendant be present for his trial.
“The rule makes no provision for a defendant to simply decide he has better things to do, and it remains to be seen whether courts will apply an exception when the ‘thing’ is running for president,” he said.
Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond law professor, said he expects the judges presiding over Trump’s trials may “attempt to accommodate his schedule to the extent that he makes reasonable requests to be absent.”
Trump can also continue to run for president even if convicted in one or more of the criminal cases — nothing in the Constitution prevents a felon from seeking the White House.
