The sixth case, which is scheduled to start the same month as the insurrection case, on March 25, is the Stormy Daniels hush-money case. Now, this matter is generally considered the weakest of the group because a payment like the one Trump allegedly made isn’t a felony unless there’s an underlying felony crime. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has laid out a rationale along those lines, having to do with violation of campaign finance laws. It looks pretty straightforward to me, but as The New Republic’s Matt Ford explained, Bragg has done some creative legal embroidery to get this case to trial. He’ll have to convince a jury, in essence, that Trump paid Daniels off for the specific purpose of influencing the election. That he did so seems obvious common sense to you and me; I mean, why else would he have paid her? But common sense doesn’t always win in a courtroom, where statutes reign supreme. Still, in a jurisdiction where the defendant isn’t exactly beloved, there seems a chance that common sense can actually defeat obscurantist legal language.
Finally, the seventh case is the classified documents case, set for late next May. That case will be heard in a Trump-friendly jurisdiction before a judge he appointed to the bench. On those two points, Trump has lucked out. However, the voluminous evidence against him, in the form of photos of boxes of classified documents, along with that tape of Trump admitting that he lacks the power as an ex-president to declassify documents, is rather less fortunate.
Trump will be playing the role of semi-professional defendant throughout the primary season and in the run-up to the GOP convention, scheduled for July 15 in Milwaukee. Is it that hard to imagine that Republican delegates may end up convening to nominate a candidate who has just been dealt one, or two, or three convictions? Trump is additionally at risk of having to pay up to three staggeringly expensive financial penalties—in the current case, the Carroll suit, and the class-action suit. I find these scenarios very easy to imagine. In fact, I daresay that some crime-and-punishment cocktail along those lines seems more likely to be served than not.
Utterlybored on October 2nd, 2023 at 12:33 UTC »
He could well come our partially scathed and still be capable of enormous damage to American democracy. Anything short of traditional incarceration will see him as a continuing chaos factor in American politics.
Shadowfox898 on October 2nd, 2023 at 12:24 UTC »
The trials after the Beer Hall Putsch should have brought Hitler to ruin.
The media instead published every word he said because that sold papers.
Accomplished-Cap1916 on October 2nd, 2023 at 11:51 UTC »
I’m for anything as long as I don’t have to hear his nonsense any longer.