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On Friday afternoon, Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is the trial judge in the case against Donald Trump being brought by special prosecutor Jack Smith, announced that the start date of the trial will be delayed.
Now, the trial was supposed to begin on March 4th of this year. However, the case – which is Jack Smith’s attempt to claim that Donald Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election via “election interference” (in what Professor Jonathan Turley has called a First Amendment issue with real consequences for free speech) – has stalled out in the courts. The Trump camp has appealed, claiming presidential immunity, obviously seeking to delay the case long enough to get past the November election. Jack Smith then tried appealing directly to the Supreme Court for a ruling, but SCOTUS declined to take the case up before lower courts had ruled. The case will likely end up in the Supreme Court eventually, but Smith didn’t get to leapfrog over the Court of Appeals.
Which leads us back around to the impending March 4th start date. Conveniently, and not at all coincidentally, this trial was supposed to start the day before Super Tuesday. I know, everyone is shocked, SHOCKED, that the trial was scheduled to begin the day before a major primary election day. This was, in Jack Smith’s estimation, going to be a huge blow to Donald Trump’s potential electoral chances.
That is, until the votes started coming in. Trump has already won in Iowa and in New Hampshire, and this primary contest it all over save a “black swan” event. While Super Tuesday does have 16 states voting that day, it is highly unlikely that Nikki Haley will be suddenly able to pull off an upset in the primary race. Any effect in starting the federal trial in Washington D.C. on March 4th has now been blunted.
Now Judge Chutkan, who is no stranger to harsh sentences for January 6th cases, has announced that the trial is indefinitely on hold during the appeal – and took the starting date off the court calendar.
Former President Donald Trump’s federal election interference trial in Washington, D.C., will no longer begin on March 4, Judge Tanya Chutkan wrote in a court order released Friday.
Friday’s ruling comes as the D.C. Circuit Court has not yet decided on whether the former president is immune from prosecution. A panel of federal appeals court judges heard oral arguments on Jan. 9, and the case is on an expedited schedule.
“The court will set a new schedule if and when the mandate is returned,” said the court order from Chutkan.
A lawyer for Trump and a spokesman for the special counsel both declined to comment.
There were previous hints that the March 4 start date would not go ahead as scheduled. Chutkan was set to oversee trial proceedings in a separate case on April 2, according to court schedules, which could have overlapped with Trump’s case if March 4 had still been the start date. As recently as Thursday, D.C.’s court calendar also did not list Chutkan as overseeing a case on March 4.
Indefinitely suspending the trial has to be a massive blow to Jack Smith. He must know that should Donald Trump win the 2024 election, his federal cases in Florida and D.C. are dead in the water. The delay in the case here makes it ever more likely that, in a best case scenario, Donald Trump is the Republican nominee before this trial can finish. The Georgia RICO case is currently imploding in spectacular fashion. The New York case being pushed by DA Alvin Bragg, which is rehashing the Stormy Daniels money, is very weak and very politically old news. Trump may still end up with a conviction, but it is unlikely to satisfy those who wanted multiple convictions plus long prison sentences.
What Trump needs to do now is leave the legal wrangling to his lawyers, and focus solely on Joe Biden. Which he did today with a new ad.
https://twitter.com/iv_times/status/1753537707819831358
If Donald Trump can stick to hammering Joe Biden, and let the lawyers do their thing, then there is a good chance that come November, these legal issues will be resolved.
Featured image: Gage Skidmore/flickr.com/cropped/Creative Commons
Cameron says: Trump’s whole focus should be the border and nothing else at this point. Start showing clips of the illegal flipping off the camera after the little savage was released from custody as well.
Kevin says: It says a lot about your belief in his “innocence” when “delaying” a legal case is “winning.”
It says a lot about your belief in his “guilt” when not following the regular judicial process is “losing.”
Cameron says: Five bucks says during the Bush Administration, he was one of the people yelling about how Bush should be assassinated or put in prison for life.
A Reader says: First of all, just because it’s delayed, that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. it’s likely that the appeals court is trying to get the ruling written in a manner so that it will stand up to an appeal to the Supreme Court. And the Alvin Bragg case isn’t nothing: Michael Cohen went to prison for the exact same crime. Maybe listening to real lawyers and legal analysts is a good idea? (Turley doesn’t count. Just because you had an illustrious career at one point doesn’t change that ETTD.)
As for the Georgia case, the state of Georgia’s Response to Opposition says that under Georgia law: “‘personal relationships among lawyers– even on opposing sides of litigation– do not constitute impermissible conflicts of interest.’ Counsel for Ray Smith and counsel for Kenneth Chesebro are in a personal relationship. Jenna Ellis’ lawyers are married law partners. The State has not made note of these relationships because they do not raise a conflict & until now, ‘private lives,’ were not a topic.” It’s worth noting there that Chesebro has already pled guilty and accepted a plea deal while Ray Smith has not. For a more detailed analysis of the actual law around the situation go here: https://www.justsecurity.org/91368/why-fani-willis-is-not-disqualified-under-georgia-law/
And none of this has any bearing on the charges Trump faces or the facts– which do not care about your feelings– of the case. It’s worth noting that several high profile defendants like Chesebro, Ellis, and Sydney Powell have all already pled guilty. They likely would not have done so if they felt there was a way to argue the case. It’s also worth noting that Wade’s wife didn’t say a peep until Roman brought up his unsworn evidence and witnesses. Their divorce had been proceeding for two years without a peep. That seems interesting, no?
Fact is, it was never the courts that would stop Trump from being elected. It’s up to the voters. And given the recent wins Democrats have had around the country and the current mood around Dobbs and the crazy clown side show this creates, it looks like there’s a chance. It’s still going to be a fight, though.
All of this is just wish casting and distraction away from the fact that the frontrunner for your party is a multiple indicted tax fraud rapist. But why would you ever want to distract from that?
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