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This column has noted that the elected Democrats, Biden DOJ-appointed prosecutors, legal activists, and others who have filed criminal charges and lawsuits against former President Donald Trump have crafted a multiple-redundant line of attack. If one case fails, there is another to back it up, and if that case fails, there is another to back it up, and so on.
There are four criminal cases against the former president, all charging him with felonies. At the beginning of this week, there were 91 felony counts against Trump, but a judge in the Georgia prosecution threw out some counts, so the total number of felony counts Trump faces now stands at 88.
That is a lot of redundancy. All it takes is for Trump to be convicted on a single count in a single case for Democrats and their allies to make a million campaign ads branding President Joe Biden's challenger a "convicted felon." Polls have shown that some voters who might otherwise support Trump will back away if he is convicted of a felony. That alone might be enough to swing the election. So of course the Democratic lawfare team, and its cheerleaders in the media, is desperate that at least one Trump trial start and reach a verdict before the Nov. 5 election.
But the anti-Trump team has been getting more and more nervous these days. It's worried about Supreme Court review of a Trump defense motion claiming immunity to federal charges in the 2020 election/Jan. 6 case. It's worried about the federal classified documents case bogging down in the minutiae of handling millions of documents. It's worried the Georgia state case will sputter in the aftermath of misconduct between top prosecutors. The only case that gives it real hope is Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's case charging Trump did something illegal eight years ago in paying for a nondisclosure agreement with porn star Stormy Daniels.
When all the other cases were stumbling, Bragg's case moved forward, scheduled to start trial 10 days from now, on March 25. On Bragg's shoulders rested a lot of resistance hopes to prosecute Biden's main opponent successfully before the election.
But now there's a problem with Bragg's case, too. On Thursday, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office said it would be open to a Trump request to delay the start of the trial for 30 days. (The Trump team wants 90 days, and a judge might pick another number.) The reason has to do with a third party — the Justice Department, in the form of the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. You might recall that SDNY, as they call it, had previously investigated the whole Daniels case and decided against charging Trump with anything. It did not change that decision when control of the Justice Department shifted from Trump to Biden.
Trump has been trying to get SDNY to turn over documents from its investigation — the one that resulted in no charges against Trump. Now, it turns out SDNY waited a long time to hand them over. Not too long ago, it handed over 73,000 pages, and then, on Tuesday afternoon, just days before the trial was scheduled to begin, SDNY "produced approximately 31,000 pages of additional records," according to Bragg's office. Today, SDNY informed Bragg it'd be turning over 15,000 more records.
That has thrown a wrench into the works. Without full knowledge of what information the records contain, and what it means, it's probably not possible to say how long the trial will eventually be delayed. Even in Bragg's best-case scenario, the delay will be one month.
The anti-Trump legal talking head community is up in arms, angry at the Southern District of New York for the delay. "WTF, SDNY?" posted left-wing legal scholar Laurence Tribe. "What on god's green earth were the Southern District federal prosecutors thinking in turning this over so late?" asked Andrew Weissmann, the former Mueller team prosecutor. "If I'm the Manhattan DA…I'm LIVID." The anti-Trump group smells some sort of rat trying to delay the Trump trial, but it doesn't know what it is.
In any event, the comforting certainty that at least one Trump trial would start soon has suddenly disappeared. Meanwhile, there are new worries about the Georgia case. Yes, the judge on Friday allowed Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to stay on the case, provided she gets rid of her ex-boyfriend Nathan Wade as the chief prosecutor. But some of the same voices expressing anger about the Manhattan case appear to be losing confidence in Willis.
"For the good of the case, given that ethics issues now abound as to Willis, she should voluntarily recuse herself from the case and allow another prosecutor to oversee the Georgia Trump case," posted Weissmann. Another anti-Trump legal voice, Joyce Vance from MSNBC, agreed. "The better path forward would be to let another prosecutor in that office take over," she posted.
So it's fair to say Lawfareland is a little jumpy these days. With Biden trailing Trump in many polls, and the election getting closer every day, it's frantic for a court, any court, to convict Trump of something in time to help Biden win. Some are pointing fingers at the Biden Justice Department for not indicting Trump earlier. Some are mad at the Supreme Court for not smoothing the way for a quick Trump trial. Some are mad at the media for not being even more anti-Trump.
The nervousness will not ease unless a prosecutor can send Trump to jail before Election Day.
(COMMENT, BELOW)