I had to write FOUR in all-caps because, Jesus Christ, a former president has been indicted for four separate incidents for a grand total of 91 counts. That is four more trials and 91 counts more than every other US president combined. Good job asshole!
Jan 6 Trial
This trial is being held in DC and concerns Trump’s attempt at overturning the election. Jack Smith is prosecuting.
The trial was originally scheduled for next month, but Judge Chutkan cancelled the start of the trial on account of Trump’s appeal on immunity grounds. The appeal took the trial out of her hands and removed it to the Eleventh Circuit. A panel of the Eleventh Circuit ruled that Trump is not immune. At the same time they released a one page order returning the case to Judge Chutkan on February 12th IF the Supreme Court doesn’t issue a stay.
SCOTUS, oddly enough, turned down Jack Smith’s request to get a ruling on whether Trump is immune to prosecution back in December. It took just 11 days that time. Smith had been trying to get an answer then to avoid further delay down the line. Whether it now wants to consider it now is an open question. If it does, it will start to look like they’re trying to run out the clock before the election.
If SCOTUS decides it doesn’t need to weigh in on whether Trump should be a dictator, then the trial may start as soon as mid-April. If SCOTUS does want to weigh in, who knows. Dennis Aftergut suggests they might take three months. But no one knows for sure. A three-month delay should still allow the trial to go forward before the election and might allow for the Hush Money Trial to conclude.
Shorter- Starts either April if SCOTUS punts, or July if SCOTUS issues a quick ruling or Alvin Bragg’s trial starts earlier; or some later date if SCOTUS decides to fuck around. Good chance it concludes before the election.
Hush Money Trial
This case was brought by Manhattan AG Alvin Bragg and concerns Trump’s payment of hush money to Stormy Daniels.
The next hearing in this trial is scheduled for Feb 15th and Trump is set to attend. The hearing covers when the trial will start, and whether the case might possibly be dismissed. The trial itself is set to start March 25th, but Alvin Bragg has suggested he would be flexible in the scheduling. The trial that seems most likely to interfere with the scheduling of this one would be the Jan 6 trial.
A conviction wouldn’t be pardonable by any future president. This trial is unlikely to include the sorts of delays on Constitutional issues that the federal trials have featured as it concerns Trump’s behavior before the presidency.
Shorter- Starts in March or possibly in the summer if Jan 6 trial goes first. Good chance it concludes before the election.
Fulton County RICO Case
Fulton County DA Fani Willis secured indictments of Donald Trump and a host of co-conspirators on RICO charges trying to overturn the election. Evidence includes one of Trump’s “perfect phone calls”.
Following Mike Roman’s motion to dismiss on account of the romantic relationship between Fani Willis and Nathan Wade, this one has been in the news a lot. But most of the news concerns Fani Willis’ poor judgement, and not the trial itself, as most legal observers think it’s unlikely she’ll be removed from the case by the judge. There is a hearing scheduled for Feb 15th (Trump is having a busy day!) that will try to decide these issues. The prosecution has requested a start date of August 5, but no date has yet been confirmed. This is the most complicated of all the cases, and Fani Willis has said that she believes the trial may take as long as a year. The good news is that if Trump is convicted here he can’t count on a pardon.
Shorter- Trial probably won’t start until late summer, or later if other trials go forward first. Highly unlikely to be resolved before the election.
Documents Case
Trump allegedly took national security documents to his Mar A Lago home and then refused to return them to National Archives when asked.
I’ve been pretty consistently bearish on this case. Aileen Cannon first made her entrance into this case back in August 2022. Shortly after Trump’s home was searched by the FBI for documents reported missing by the National Archives, Trump sued to get a special master appointed to review the documents. Cannon appointed one, and ordered a halt to the investigation. While she was eventually overruled by the 11th circuit, this gave a lot of people the impression that she was in the tank for Trump.
So fast forward to 2023 and Jack Smith has secured indictments on Donald Trump and Walt Nauta. When she was appointed to the case, there was a lot of consternation- why did Jack Smith indict in Florida? Because the bulk of the crimes were committed in Florida, and the Constitution gives citizens the right to be tried where they (allegedly) committed the crime. Wasn’t it suspicious that Aileen Cannon got the trial? Not exactly.
Smith weighed the options, and, mindful of the play clock, did not want to waste precious time with venue motions and possible appeals. Under Section 2.01.01 (a) of Internal Operating Procedures of the Florida court, criminal cases are supposed to be assigned by the clerk on a “blind random basis.” So he rolled the dice on Florida, calculating his one in 26 odds of drawing the dreaded Judge Cannon were pretty good. The problem is, as they said in “The Music Man,” he didn’t know the territory. The odds were really as short as three to one against drawing Cannon.
Anyway, Cannon has lived up to her reputation and has been helping out Trump. Just yesterday declaring that Trump could review some of the seized documents. Jack Smith had argued that this would create delay for the trial that was supposed to start May 20. Personally, I’m not convinced Cannon won’t go for the gold and hold a long, pointless trial that ends in acquittal while preempting any other possible trials. But that might be being too pessimistic.
Shorter- This trial is scheduled for May 20th. IMHO the only way this concludes before the election is if Cannon thinks it can fuck up the timeline for the Jan 6 case.