Filing shows Trump 'getting desperate' as he braces for 'worst-case scenario': analyst

Donald Trump's recent filing in Georgia shows that he is "getting desperate," according to an analyst from MSNBC.

The former president recently asked the Georgia Supreme Court to block the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office from pursuing cases against him and his allies for alleged criminal interference in the 2020 presidential election. That filing points to Trump's desperation to avoid a case in Georgia, and that desperation is well-founded, analyst Hayes Brown wrote in a column for MSNBC.

"In an attempt to head off Willis, Trump’s lawyers on Thursday filed a petition with the Georgia Supreme Court to have the district attorney disqualified from investigating him," Brown wrote Saturday. "The filing explicitly acknowledges what a long shot their bid is — and implicitly makes clear just how worried Trump is about facing another set of charges that he potentially won’t be able to wriggle out of if re-elected."

Brown added:

"When compared with his normal attempts to grind the judicial process to a halt, Trump urging a court to move quickly takes on a certain air of desperation. In the filing his lawyers acknowledge that there has been no case in which the Georgia Supreme Court has accepted a petition of original jurisdiction in the past 40 years. It also reflects the fact that in a way the threat of charges from Willis is the biggest threat to him in the long-term."

This may seem odd because Trump is currently facing very serious charges at the federal level. Trump is currently trying to delay the trial in his criminal documents case until after the 2024 election, in the hopes that he or another Republican president could pardon him for the alleged misconduct. But that's not even possible in state-based cases, according to Brown.

"The federal charges that he faces in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case are serious, to be sure. So is the potential chance that special counsel Jack Smith indicts Trump on his role in the lead-up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. But a conviction in either case still wouldn’t necessarily prevent Trump from serving as president if re-elected — and as soon as he’s sworn-in he could theoretically pardon himself even before a verdict comes in either case."

Brown continues:

"There’s no chance of that in the hush money case that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg brought against Trump in March. State-level convictions can’t be overturned using the presidential pardon power, leaving him vulnerable on that front. But the legal argument that Bragg has used to prosecute his case is a relatively novel one that doesn’t guarantee a conviction against the former president."

Read the full piece here.