It’s easy to forget that former President Donald Trump’s schedule between now and November was supposed to be completely packed with courthouse appearances as back-to-back trials played out for weeks at a time. Instead, the jury in the Manhattan criminal trial may be the only one he faces in 2024, leaving what was seen by some as the biggest long shot of four criminal cases against him as the only chance of a jury’s convicting Trump before Election Day.
As of Wednesday, the New York hush money trial remains the only one that has been officially scheduled. The federal charges he faces in Florida and Washington have run into lengthy delays and uncertainty. In Georgia, a state appeals court put proceedings on pause this month, most likely bumping back a proposed August start date.
The most debilitating hurdles for special counsel Jack Smith in the federal cases have come from the bench.
The most debilitating hurdles for special counsel Jack Smith in the federal cases have come from the bench. In both cases he has brought against Trump, Smith has found himself struggling with judges and justices who have been credulous about, if not outright sympathetic to, the defendant’s most outlandish claims. The classified documents case in Florida should have been open and shut for any other civilian facing similar charges. But U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has slow-walked a series of rulings that legal experts say a more experienced judge would have dealt with quickly as Trump and his co-defendants have lobbed a boatload of seemingly frivolous motions her way. What was at one point set to be a trial that would begin last week has now been delayed indefinitely as Cannon ambles her way through the backlog.
Meanwhile, the election interference case in Washington is on hold thanks to the Supreme Court. Trump has thrown out numerous wild claims as to why he shouldn’t be able to be held accountable for attempting to overturn the 2020 election results, including that he was acquitted during the Senate’s 2021 impeachment trial and that he has been unfairly targeted as a political figure. Distressingly, the argument that gained the most traction here is that his schemes were “official acts” that should be immune from prosecution.
The consequences of a ruling agreeing with that proposition would be stunning, as it would give carte blanche to any president to break the law so long as he could claim it was part of the job. There are at least three justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch — who seemed all too willing to accept Trump’s lawyers’ arguments during oral arguments in late April, the last case heard this term. It seems very possible that they may side with a narrow majority finding a sliver of merit to Trump’s immunity argument, sending the case back to a lower court to determine whether the coup attempts fall under their new guidelines. Whatever decision a majority winds up reaching, the delay in publishing an opinion has forced Smith to sit on his hands and wait before the district court proceedings can continue.
Trump has been able to bring those scattershot arguments forward only because of the biggest advantage in his corner: money. He has been able to turn a fire hose of money toward the lawyers who’ve been willing to have him as a client. Importantly, even if it weren’t the case that Trump is an objectively wealthy person, none of those massive, and still mounting, legal fees have come from his own pockets. Not a single asset has had to be sold off to give him the liquidity that sustaining defenses on this many fronts requires.
Trump has been able to bring those scattershot arguments forward only because of the biggest advantage in his corner: money.
As a former president and the current presumptive Republican nominee, Trump has spent years now persuading his supporters to throw money his way, even at the potential expense of his own campaign. As I’ve noted before, the wellspring of cash that has been funneled from his political action committee to his lawyers has given them the space (and billable hours) to throw fistfuls of legal spaghetti at the wall in hopes that some of it sticks. Fortunately for their client, some of it hasn’t just stuck; it has been ruled delicious by the supposed jurists I named earlier.
But not everyone can tap into a vast political fundraising network to pay their legal bills. Compare the rampant delays in Trump’s trials to the relatively speedy pace of the bribery case against Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., which got underway this month. While there are interesting constitutional issues at play in his case, Menendez hasn’t had the luxury of the same machine gun of potential defenses that Trump has been able to buy.
Finally, it is unquestionable that Trump has been very, very lucky in how this process has played out. It was only through the luck of the draw that Cannon was assigned to the Mar-a-Lago trial after facing major scrutiny for allowing Trump to delay the FBI’s review of documents seized from his estate. Likewise, it’s not legal issues that have put the Georgia case, which was always a complicated matter with over a dozen co-defendants, on hold. Instead, it’s Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ relationship with the special prosecutor she brought in on the case that has been exploited to halt the gears.
It’s easy to look at the current state of play and determine that, despite his many claims to the contrary, the system isn’t rigged against Trump. But it also isn’t rigged for him; either would imply a predetermined outcome in the New York jury’s verdict, which is far from the case. It is entirely true, though, to say the odds have stacked in Trump’s favor since his indictments last year. Together they have managed to coalesce into a wall of interference, potentially leaving Trump’s calendar wide open between now and November.