Trump may never face trial

Certainly not before the next election

Last week was a big news week, with Trump’s indictment, the beginning of Ukraine’s long-awaited counteroffensive, and a big Supreme Court gerrymandering case which actually went against Republicans. Look out for posts on the latter two next week, but here’s one about Trump’s indictment. Sign up for a free trial or a subscription - just $5 a month for you, but a big deal for me - to read it all.

Donald Trump, the only president to be determined by a court to be guilty of sexual assault and the only president to be charged with felonies under state law, has made history again by becoming the first president to be indicted on federal criminal charges. Some presidents go down in history as synonymous with criminality - think of Richard Nixon and Watergate, or Warren Harding and the Teapot Dome scandal - but Trump easily outshines them all. The details included in the government’s indictment show a brazen and wilful disregard for America’s secrets, and the picture of him storing classified documents in his bathroom will become an iconic image of the way he flushed American national security down the toilet. The true scale of what he did might not even be included in the indictment because some of the secrets he mishandled are too sensitive to ever be shown in a court of law.

And yet, there’s a good chance he might never even face trial.

Even in the best of circumstances, federal cases can take over a year to ever reach court. There are plea negotiations, discovery (when the two sides trade information about the evidence that will be used in the trial), and many opportunities for defense attorneys to file various motions designed to delay or derail the trial. The judge that has been assigned to Trump’s case is Aileen Cannon, who at an earlier stage in this investigation issued rulings which were so bizarre and pro-Trump that she had to be overruled by a higher court. Such rulings and counter-rulings take time as well. Trump can also engage in the simple expedient of firing his attorneys shortly before the trial, which allows him to claim more time in order to get the new attorneys up to speed.

The special counsel overseeing this case, Jack Smith, has promised a speedy trial, and he’s already made some decisions that attempt to expedite it. He brought the charges in Miami rather than Washington, D.C. in order to avoid a lengthy fight over location - Trump prefers the trial be in Florida because of the likelihood of getting a more sympathetic jury.¹ Yet beyond this, there’s not a great deal he can do. It’s already June 2023, and Trump could easily delay proceedings until after November 2024, at which point he might be elected again as president of the United States.