Judge Aileen Cannon Friday paused deadlines in a controversial order that special counsel Jack Smith had condemned as a “clear error” in former President Donald Trump’s classified document case, according to court records and reports.
Earlier this week, Cannon ordered Smith to deliver to her by Friday proposals for unredacted FBI interview witness reports that could appear on the public docket.
On Friday, the Florida federal judge stayed those deadlines and gave Trump’s attorneys until Feb. 23 to respond to Smith’s request Thursday that she reconsider, records and a Courthouse News report show.
"A copy of the discovery materials with limited redactions was expected to be filed Friday," the report states. "Cannon instead issued an order to stay that deadline as she reviews the special counsel’s motion."
On Thursday, Smith argued Cannon's two rulings would expose about two dozen witnesses in the Mar-a-Lago classified document case to risk.
“That discovery material, if publicly docketed in unredacted form as the Court has ordered, would disclose the identities of numerous potential witnesses,” Smith argued, “exposing them to significant and immediate risks of threats, intimidation, and harassment, as has already happened to witnesses, law enforcement agents, judicial officers, and Department of Justice employees whose identities have been disclosed in cases in which defendant Trump is involved.”
Cannon, who was appointed by Trump, faced criticism from legal experts over what they described as a “disturbing” ruling that showed signs of potential bias.
"Judges should not put their fingers on the scales of justice either for or against a defendant or any other party,” said former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance.
"Here, it’s impossible to avoid the conclusion that the scales are being tipped."
Many of Donald Trump's political allies have debased themselves for the former president, only to fall out of his good graces, but perhaps no one else has ever fallen so far as Mark Meadows.
The ex-president's final White House chief of staff joined the MAGA think tank Conservative Partnership Institute a week after Trump left office and enjoys a salary of just under $850,000, but New York Timesreporter Robert Draper told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that Meadows has been cast out of the Trump orbit as he faces Georgia racketeering charges and other legal perils.
"In a broader sense, I mean, he's in deep trouble," Draper said. "I mean, he received an immunity order to testify before the federal grand jury, and it seems pretty evident to me that the game that Meadows is playing here is that he wants to stay out of trouble. He doesn't want to be prosecuted by Jack Smith's team. At the same time, he doesn't want to take the witness stand, so he provided a road map during six hours of testimony he gave to the grand jury on March 23 of last year."
"My suspicion is that Smith's team is going to want him on the witness stand, because he was the man in the room next to Donald Trump when Trump apparently knew that he had lost the election but proceeded to try to overturn it anyway," Draper added. "Of course, if Smith's team puts Meadows on the witness stand, they're putting a habitual liar on the stand, meaning he could be eviscerated on cross-examination. The problem Meadows has is now Jack Smith's problem, too."
Meadows stands alone among former Trump allies – and political figures, in general, Draper said.
"In a class of his own is the answer," Draper said. "Over 30 years of reporting on politics, I have never encountered someone who is so loathed. A lot of people feel that way because they felt lied and swindled by him. Many of these people, I should add, are, like himself, conservative Christians who took him at his word, who saw him as cut from the same religious cloth, as it were, as they are, and then found that he was a shyster. So many of them remain embittered by Meadows, they simply didn't want to talk to me, as if it was an act of self-defilement to revisit those years."
"He really is -- obviously, to say anyone is the least trusted man in Washington, I mean, that's a distinction you have to work hard to earn," Draper added. "Let's say, Mark Meadows is a hard-working man."
Special counsel Jack Smith asked U.S. District judge Aileen Cannon to reverse her recent decision that could expose potential witnesses in the Mar-a-Lago case to threats from Donald Trump supporters.
The special counsel's office filed a motion to reconsider the ruling, which they called a "clear error" that defied an 11th Circuit Court precedent, to publicly release discovery documents in unredacted form at the request of the former president and media groups, reported Politico's Kyle Cheney.
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"That discovery material, if publicly docketed in unredacted form as the Court has ordered, would disclose the identities of numerous potential witnesses, along with the substance of the statements they made to the FBI or the grand jury, exposing them to significant and immediate risks of threats, intimidation, and harassment, as has already happened to witnesses, law enforcement agents, judicial officers, and Department of Justice employees whose identities have been disclosed in cases in which defendant Trump is involved," the filing stated.
Smith's office said the judge did not give enough consideration to concerns about witness safety despite threats to herself and other judges involved in Trump cases.
"The Court's conclusion that the Government's witness-safety concerns are too speculative or generalized is misplaced," the filing stated. "A court's duty is to prevent harms to the witnesses or the judicial process 'at their inception,' before they are realized and dysfunction envelops the trial."
Prosecutors asked Cannon to reconsider the release of unredacted FBI interview reports of witnesses who fear public exposure, testimony that reveals nonpublic details about the layout of Mar-a-Lago, and identify a White House aide who testified about how presidents review classified materials.
Smith argued the judge incorrectly stated that the government must show a compelling interest in keeping documents private, saying that standard does not apply to documents filed to satisfy discovery requirements.
"The Eleventh Circuit has held that the compelling-interest standard applied by the Court does not apply to 'documents filed in connection with motions to compel discovery,' which instead may be sealed or redacted simply upon a showing of 'good cause,'" prosecutors stated. "Because the Court applied the wrong legal standard... reconsideration is warranted to 'correct clear error.'"
Trump's legal team is probably typing away on their filing to get his classified documents obstruction case scrapped now that President Joe Biden dodged criminal charges.
Former federal prosecutor Elie Honig said the win for Biden to avoid criminal prosecution for being found to possess boxes of classified documents in his garage was a "close call" and may have cracked the window for Trump counsel to make a bid to convince the judge to stick a fork in his Florida federal case.
"Mark my words, Donald Trump's team in the federal [Special Counsel] Jack Smith classified documents team at Mar-a-Lago is going to bring a motion for what is called selective prosecution," he said. "Very, very hard to win these motions. What you have to do is show a judge, 'Somebody else did essentially the same thing I did. I was prosecuted. He was not.'"
"Now, Donald Trump has a basis to make that motion."
Special Counsel Robert Hur ended his 15-month probe of Biden with a decision to not bring formal charges for his mishandling of classified documents when he was phasing out as Vice President of the Obama administration and knocked him for being a "well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory."
Biden later appeared in a White House press conference defiant that he didn't "willfully retain" classified documents and called those accusations "not only misleading; they're just plain wrong."
Honig believes Biden came extremely close to becoming a defendant in a criminal case.
"This is a very close call," he said referring to his reading of Hur's prosecution memo may make Biden's behavior less problematic, but that he believes it was "close to the line" of being illegal.
"Here's the facts... Joe Biden retained sensitive classified documents after he left the vice presidency," he said. "Marked classified. Highest level. Top secret SCI."
"They related to our international affairs to war plans, foreign relations. He knew it. He knew it. He's on tape after he's out of the vice presidency, saying the classified documents are in the basement. He knew it."
Lastly, Honig makes clear that Biden appears to be trying to win the day by claiming he cooperated whereas Trump allegedly obstructed.
But he corrects him saying, "the fact that Joe Biden cooperated it's not a free pass," he said.
Donald Trump's latest attempt to delay the classified documents criminal trial was met with a "scathing response" from Special Counsel Jack Smith, one legal expert said on Thursday.
Trump stands accused of stashing away classified documents after his presidency and then refusing to give them back even when subpoenaed by the government. Recently, his attorney in that case said the allegations involving obstruction were more "damning" than those President Joe Biden faces.
Legal analyst Anna Bower flagged the filing, saying, "After Trump moved to extend pre-trial deadlines in the classified docs case, Jack Smith files a scathing response. The defendants 'will stop at nothing to stall the adjudication of the charges against them by a fair and impartial jury of citizens,' the special counsel writes."
The Smith filing also states that Trump's "objective is plain--to delay trial as long as possible."
"And the tactics they deploy are relentless and misleading," it reads.
Donald Trump on Thursday begged Special Counsel Jack Smith to drop "all litigation" against him in order to allow the nation to "heal."
The former president has been charged by Smith in connection with the ex-president's alleged election subversion efforts, as well as for purportedly holding onto classified documents despite a subpoena from the government to return them.
"If Special Counsel Jack Smith wants to do good for our Country, and help to unify it, he should drop all Litigation against Joe Biden’s Political Opponent, ME, and let our Country HEAL," Trump posted on his own social media site, Truth Social.
"This would be a far bigger and better achievement than anything he has ever done, and will be easy for the Great Patriots of our Country to understand in light of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s Document Report on Joe Biden, where the evidence is overwhelming that he 'willfully retained' important documents!"
The Hur report has been criticized for calling into question Biden's memory.
With President Joe Biden getting a criminal hall pass, former President Donald Trump’s ex-lawyer in the federal classified documents case locked horns with CNN’s Jake Tapper over a critical detail: they may both be pack rats, but one president allegedly obstructed and the other didn’t.
“For just as Joe Biden should have returned the documents the moment he's telling his ghost writer, ‘Hey, I found the classified stuff downstairs!’ so, too, would Trump have had to do it,” said Timothy Parlatore, who defended the 45th president after a federal grand jury in Miami in June 2023 decided to indict him for stashing away classified documents from the White House to Mar-a-Lago and then rebuffing the government’s request to return them.
On Thursday, Special Counsel Robert Hur decided to not bring criminal charges against President Joe Biden for knowingly keeping classified documents.
Parlatore claims Biden had the benefit of “seeing what Trump did” so he could avoid making the same moves.
Tapper pressed Parlatore about the fact that his former client stands accused of intentionally trying to keep the files and lying about them when formally approached by the feds.
But Parlatore says Trump was packing up in haste after losing a bid for s second term in what he called “a very chaotic time” whereas Biden “it appears intentionally took these things with him."
Tapper interjected, “Because he thought he could even though he was wrong.”
Then Parlatore acknowledged that each played different legal cards despite holding similar hands.
“And that's the difference is that he took them, whereas Donald Trump, it's more about what did he do once he found them,” said Parlatore.
Parlatore added that Jack Smith and his team have been “making significant distinctions with the alleged obstruction.”
Parlatore added “It's the allegation, it's not proven yet, but those allegations certainly do make it appear much more you know, damning on the one side.”
Donald Trump's lawyers have hung their defense of his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection on a line from his speech at the "Stop the Steal" rally at the Ellipse, but a trio of legal experts say the broader record of his statements and actions undermines that argument.
The former claimed last month during a speech that his supporters had acted "peacefully and patriotically," echoing that key line from his speech that his attorneys have made a centerpiece of his defense since his post-Jan. 6 impeachment, but abundant evidence shows they did not and he didn't want them to, wrote legal experts Tom Joscelyn, Norman L. Eisen and Fred Wertheimer for Just Security.
"We expect prosecutors will explain to the jurors why the sentence in the Ellipse speech is, in actuality, more incriminating than exculpatory when understood in context," they wrote. "Indeed, evidence uncovered by the January 6th Select Committee shows that Trump deliberately and repeatedly implored his followers to 'fight' – and was reticent to use the word 'peaceful' at all. Recent revelations of evidence gathered by Special Counsel Jack Smith will also help prove the case."
The authors lay out a detailed and damning compendium of Trump's public statements and behind-the-scenes evidence uncovered by prosecutors and the House select committee that shows White House officials, outside allies and family members begged the former president to call off his supporters once the violence erupted, but he refused for hours.
"It was not until 4:17 p.m. that Trump released a video telling his supporters they needed to go home and '[w]e have to have peace' – a command that many rioters quickly obeyed," the authors wrote. "In that video, however, Trump openly sympathized with the rioters’ cause, telling them: 'I know your pain, I know you’re hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us.'"
Even more potentially damning is a statement he posted on Twitter at 6:01 p.m., in which he justified their actions, saying, "These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away."
That statement could undermine his U.S. Supreme Court appeal to a Colorado ruling to disqualify him under the Constitution's insurrection clause, and it could be used as evidence in special counsel Jack Smith's election subversion case.
"Smith may also use this statement as an admission by Trump that the assault on the Capitol was a foreseeable consequence of telling the mob that his landslide victory had been stolen from them," the authors pointed out. “'Remember this day forever!' Trump wrote."
Special counsel Jack Smith's office revealed a series of threats made to potential witnesses in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case.
Federal prosecutors asked U.S. District judge Aileen Cannon in a filing late Wednesday to allow them to file an exhibit under seal, one day after she had ruled against their request to keep some evidence redacted to protect witnesses and investigations, reported ABC News.
"The exhibit describes in some detail threats that have been made over social media to a prospective Government witness and the surrounding circumstances," the filing states, "and the fact that those threats are the subject of an ongoing federal investigation being handled by a United States Attorney's Office."
"Disclosure of the details and circumstances of the threats risks disrupting the investigation," prosecutors added.
Cannon had faulted Smith's team in her order Tuesday for failing to identify the information they wished to redact or explain how public disclosures would jeopardize the integrity of the investigation, but prosecutors responded by saying broader redactions were necessary to keep Donald Trump from learning about some potential witnesses or other key details.
Simply redacting names or other portions of the document could still "provide information to the suspect to which he/she may not otherwise be entitled," prosecutors wrote.
The former president has pleaded not guilty to 37 felony counts related to his handling of classified documents, along with longtime aide Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago staffer Carlos De Oliveira, who have pleaded not guilty for taking part in an effort to obstruct the federal investigation.
Specifically, Draper says that court documents still under seal show that "Meadows did in fact receive an immunity order, signed on March 20, 2023, by Chief Judge James E. Boasberg of the District Court in Washington, to testify before a federal grand jury" that had been investigating Trump's efforts to illegally remain in power after losing the 2020 presidential election.
Draper believes that this testimony gives Trump "reason for Trump to be fretful about Meadows" because "Meadows did not simply honor a subpoena request with a single obligatory interview with federal prosecutors; rather, he spoke expansively to them and then, the next day, testified before the grand jury for approximately six hours."
Added to this, writes Draper, Meadows was not named as an unindicted coconspirator in special counsel Jack Smith's election subversion indictment against Trump, which means there's a good chance he gave Smith and his team very useful information against the former president.
While it's not known exactly what Meadows told prosecutors, Draper argues that "a firsthand verification from Trump’s former top aide that the president knew that he lost the election but proceeded with efforts to overturn the results anyway might by itself sway the jury to find Trump guilty and send him to prison."
Now, there’s a legitimate chance Donald Trump could be running for president, or even serving as commander in chief, from behind bars.
Two overriding factors contribute to this bizarre reality.
Firstly, there’s very little — legally speaking — preventing Trump from doing so.
Secondly, Trump himself has offered no indication he’ll step away. To the contrary, he’s as emboldened as ever to run for and win the presidency he lost in 2020.
Thus far, juries have found Trump civilly liable for the sexual abuse and defamation of writer E. Jean Carroll. He’s been ordered to pay more than $88 million combined in damages.
New York Judge Arthur Engoron also found Trump and associates of his business empire liable for fraudulently inflating the value of the Trump Organization’s assets. Determination of damages in the civil fraud trial are expected this month — and could be well into the hundreds of millions of dollars.
And then there's the felony charges: 91 in total across four cases. If convicted, Trump could face significant prison time — totaling more than 700 years combined.
His trials are scheduled in the midst of the Republican presidential primary.
The indictments:
For the first time in U.S. history, a grand jury on June 8, 2023, federally indicted a former president — Trump — on 37 felony counts related to the alleged willful retention of classified documents and conspiracy to conceal them. District Judge Aileen Cannon set trial to begin May 20, but in February, special counsel questioned whether the FBI missed searching some rooms at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, ABC reported.
Then it happened again on Aug. 1 when Trump was indicted on four separate federal counts related to his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election. He was set to be tried starting March 4, but U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan delayed the trial's start as Trump — unsuccessfully, so far — petitioned a federal appeals court to rule that he enjoys presidential immunity from such prosecution.
Trump also faces a criminal trial in Georgia related to election interference in the state, with trial requested for Aug. 5. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis admitted in February to having a romantic relationship with a special prosecutor overseeing the case but denied any tainting of the case, Raw Story reported.
Separately, Trump is charged in New York with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in relation to payments the Trump Organization made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. His trial is slated for March 25.
Such a laundry list of legal woes would seemingly sabotage any politician’s campaign efforts. But the cases haven’t slowed Trump down in his pursuit of a second term as president or slashed his chances — now as good as ever — of winning the 2024 Republican nomination.
Trump, who has handily won in the Republican primaries thus far, is almost certain to become the Republican nominee — and has made it clear he has no intention of dropping out of the race no matter how severe his legal battles become.
“I see no case in which I would do that,” Trump said in June during an appearance on a radio show hosted by political strategist Roger Stone, a longtime confidant. “I just wouldn't do it. I wouldn't do it. I had opportunities in 2016 to do it, and I didn't do it.”
But Allan Lichtman, a professor of history at American University, said campaigning for president and defending himself against criminal charges are two very different endeavors.
“He thinks he can win this case in the court of public opinion, but the truth is, Trump can huff, and Trump can puff, but he can't blow the courthouse down,” Lichtman said. “It’s a very, very different game once you enter a federal courthouse or a state courthouse. You can't just bluster. Anything that you present has to be proven, and you're subject to perjury.”
Still, Trump can continue to run his campaign while facing these charges — and he could even do so from prison in the event he were to be tried, convicted and sentenced before the 2024 election.
“Trump’s legal problems shouldn’t affect his campaign. Many of his supporters believe that he is being treated unfairly, and there is no prohibition against a defendant under indictment or even a convicted felon from serving as president,” said Neama Rahmani, a former assistant U.S. attorney and president of West Coast Trial Lawyers. “Theoretically, Trump could even be president while in prison.”
Indeed, the U.S. Constitution stipulates only that a presidential candidate be a natural-born citizen of the United States, be at least 35 years old and a U.S. resident for 14 years. Trump easily checks all those boxes. And congressional Democrats’ strongest efforts to potentially disqualify Trump from ever again seeking the presidency — convicting him following impeachment trials — failed.
So, what would it take for Trump to run a presidential campaign — or govern the nation — from prison?
Raw Story interviewed historians, legal experts, political operatives and former government leaders who pieced together a playbook for how he could do it — and the peril that he’d face along the way as he stands to secure the GOP nomination ahead of a general election rematch with President Joe Biden in November.
Campaigning from a cell
Each of the charges Trump faces in the classified documents federal indictment carries maximum prison sentences between five and 20 years. Across all four indictments, potential prison time could span hundreds of years.
Being behind bars would, of course, prevent Trump from campaigning in his signature fashion: at big, rowdy MAGA rallies.
But Amani Wells-Onyioha, operations director at Democratic political firm Sole Strategies, envisions Trump still figuring out ways to communicate with potential voters.
“There's no doubt in my mind that he would have some recorded press from the little prison phone. There's no doubt in my mind that he would set up press opportunities whenever he's out on the yard getting his recreational use in, that there would be cameras there,” Wells-Onyioha said. “He would be using every opportunity to campaign. I don't see him stopping at all, and I only see him using this as fuel to make him go harder.”
Keeping up his Truth Social posts from prison might not be such a challenge for Trump, Wells-Onyioha said, as some jails and prisons might allow internet access.
“I do see him using the internet because that's all that he has, and he's great at that already,” Wells-Onyioha said. “He's a huge internet, TV personality type of guy, so it really would just force him to be in a position to do something that he's the best at, which is unfortunate for the country, but as far as he's concerned, I think he thinks that this is political gold for himself.”
Plus, Trump isn’t building a campaign from scratch. His 2024 presidential campaign is flush with staffers. He enjoys the support of super PACs, which may raise and spend unlimited amounts of money on his behalf to promote the former president and attack his opponents.
He also has a roster of high-profile MAGA acolytes — from Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Elise Stefanik (R-NY) to Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem — who gladly serve as Trump surrogates.
And save for former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who remains in the race despite losses in the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, with dim prospects going forward, Trump has already vanquished his other main GOP challengers, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former Vice President Mike Pence and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy.
Meanwhile, few politicians are as good as Trump at presenting himself as a victim — he’s single-handedly vaulted the terms “witch hunt,” “deep state,” “hoax” and “fake news” into the contemporary political lexicon. As an inmate, Trump could become a martyr to the MAGA cause.
“You’re obviously handicapped to campaign, but in this electronic age, you can certainly campaign virtually, plus Trump's pretty well known. It’s not like he has to introduce himself to the American people,” Lichtman said.
If not prison, maybe jail
Former President Donald Trump arrives for his arraignment at Manhattan Criminal Court on April 04 in New York City. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
Although it seems unlikely Trump will be serving an active prison sentence before the November election, it’s conceivable he could wind up in pretrial confinement of some sort while campaigning.
This, several legal experts said, will depend on Trump himself.
“He has to behave himself during a trial, and that's not beyond the realm of possibility that he'll act up, thinking that somehow he can win over the jury, but that would be a mistake,” said Kevin O’Brien, a former assistant U.S. attorney and partner at Ford O’Brien Landy LLP who specializes in white-collar criminal defense.
His social media antics stand to put him in potential violation of pretrial instructions and release terms, raising the question of whether a judge would dare throw the former president in jail. So far, he’s been fined thousands for violating gag orders.
Brazenly defying a judge’s order or attempting to intimidate witnesses are among the more common ways a defendant can get himself thrown in jail or home confinement before or during his trial.
This isn’t merely conceptual, said Mike Lawlor, a criminal justice professor at the University of New Haven and former member of the Connecticut House of Representatives, who helped lead impeachment hearings against then-Gov. John Rowland, who ultimately pleaded guilty in federal court to political corruption.
Knowing Trump’s penchant for cutting outbursts, Lawlor can envision a judge sanctioning Trump for defying directives. Trump not only has one judge with whom to contend, but several, given the multiple legal actions against him.
“The opportunity to engage in contempt of court or witness tampering or obstruction of justice is fraught at this point. I’m not sure he has the self-control to keep himself from doing something that would get him confined pre-trial,” Lawlor said.
The U.S. House Jan. 6 select committee accused Trump of potential witness tampering, and Lawlor says he’s monitoring similar allegations here, especially because so many of the witnesses are GOP staffers of the former president.
“It’s so easy to imagine a situation where someone could be contacted and intimidated,” Lawlor said. “I think the temptation to do that for a guy like Trump is probably irresistible. I’m not sure his attorneys or the advisors he listens to can stop him from doing so. I don’t rule it out. As I said, it’s unlikely, but I can definitely see it happening.”
Using legal danger to fuel fundraising
The Trump campaign wasted no time in exploiting the indictments to raise money, leaning into a familiar claim that the candidate is a victim of a Democratic witch hunt.
Only one day after news broke about Trump’s first federal indictment, a fundraising appeal built around the charges appeared on the campaign website prominently displayed in a column on the left-hand side of the page, suggesting contribution amounts ranging from $24 to $3,300. The message lays out a bill of particulars with the former president at the center of the persecution narrative, beginning with the apocalyptic opener: “We are watching our Republic DIE before our very eyes.”
Trump Save America, the beneficiary, is a joint fundraising committee for Donald J. Trump for President 2024 and the Save America PAC, which supports Trump.
The fundraising appeal contends that a “witch hunt began when the FBI RAIDED my home and then staged it to look like a made-for-TV crime scene with police sirens and flashing red and blue lights.”
Alluding to his previous indictment in New York state, the appeals continued: “So, after a state prosecutor failed to break us, the Deep State sharpened their attacks and unleashed a FEDERAL prosecutor to TRY and take us down.”
Notwithstanding Trump’s claim, the charges in New York state remain pending, and Jack Smith, the special prosecutor appointed by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, was investigating Trump for allegedly mishandling classified documents four months before a grand jury in New Manhattan returned an indictment on the state charges related to the Stormy Daniels affair.
Minutes after the Aug. 1 indictment dropped, Trump started fundraising again, selling "I Stand With Trump" T-shirts featuring the indictment date, and Trump's mugshot from his booking at the Fulton County Jail helped him bring in more than $7 million after the Georgia indictment as he quickly took to selling mugs, shirts and other merchandise with the photo.
At least one prominent surrogate helped retail the fundraising push.
Kari Lake, a fellow election denier who lost her race for governor of Arizona in 2022, joined a Twitter Spaces co-hosted by Dustin Stockton and Jennifer Lynn Lawrence on the night news broke about Trump’s indictment on charges of mishandling classified documents.
Stockton and Lawrence helped organize the rally that provided the springboard for the Jan. 6 insurrection. During her appearance on Stockton and Lawrence’s Twitter Space, Lake, who is now running for U.S. Senate, told more than 1,300 listeners she had just gotten off the phone with Trump shortly after news broke about the indictment on June 8. Lake said it wasn’t enough for Republican voters to just say they stand with Trump or condemn the indictment.
“And if we really stand with him, we need to go to DonaldTrump.com and make a donation tonight,” said Lake, who is herselfpreparing a 2024 U.S. Senate run in Arizona. “Everybody, whether it’s $5, $10, $500 — whatever you can afford. Because if we’re gonna stand with him, we need to put our money where our mouth is tonight.”
The political monetization of Trump’s legal woes grows deeper by the month. Go to Trump’s campaign website and you’ll find several items on sale — a black-and-white ceramic coffee mug is $24 — featuring a fake mugshot of Trump above the words “NOT GUILTY”. Of late, Trump hassuggested that he would “end” his campaign in a deceptive bid to squeeze money from supporters.
The Federal Election Commission, which enforces federal campaign finance laws, would have no grounds to intervene in Trump’s fundraising efforts while facing criminal charges or even time in jail or prison, said Ann Ravel, who served as an FEC commissioner from 2013 to 2017, including one year as the commission’s chairwoman.
Trump's campaign is selling these black-and-white ceramic coffee mugs for $24. (Screen grab)
Trump’s campaign could easily continue sending supporters incessant fundraising emails and text messages in Trump’s name.
“The only problems for him would be if there's failure to disclose, or if people are giving more than the limits, all of the things that are traditional FEC issues, but they don't have the authority to do anything with regard to a person who's been indicted and is still fundraising,” Ravel said. “That in and of itself is not sufficient for the FEC to take any action.”
Lessons of Eugene Debs, incarcerated presidential candidate
Trump wouldn’t be the first candidate to run for president from prison if he were convicted.
In the weeks before the 1920 election, Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist Party candidate for president of the United States and an inmate in federal prison, touched on the significance of the moment.
“Has there ever been anything like it in American history before?” Debs said, as reported by the socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason. “Will there ever be anything like it in American history again? We must impress it upon the people that this scene is symbolic of what has befallen this country.”
There has been one other. Lyndon LaRouche, whom The New Republiccalled “The Godfather of Political Paranoia,” ran from prison in 1992 after being convicted of tax evasion and mail fraud.
His vice presidential running mate, the Rev. James Bevel, did most of the campaigning. This suggests that a jailed Trump could lean heavily on the presence of a charismatic vice presidential candidate — be it someone such as Lake of Arizona, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia or even banished Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
LaRouche received .02% of the popular vote — 26,334.
Debs, who was serving a 10-year sentence for decrying the United States’ involvement in World War I, received 3.4% of the popular vote — 919,799.
He received 6% of the vote as a candidate eight years earlier, in 1912.
While emphasizing that she’s speaking as an individual, Allison Duerk, director of the Eugene V. Debs Museum, located in Debs’ home in Terre Haute, Ind., said she cringes at comparisons between Debs and Trump. In material ways, the two men are polar opposites.
“I bristle at recent casual references to the 1920 campaign — not because they are inaccurate on the surface, but because these two men and their respective projects are diametrically opposed,” she told Raw Story.
Duerk does believe Debs predicted the emergence of American political leaders such as Trump.
Illustration of Eugene Debs while running for president in prison. Indiana State University archives
“Take this quote from the speech that got him locked up,” she said, quoting Debs: “‘In every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the people.’"
In an Appeal to Reason article, Debs said he believed in change “but by perfectly peaceful and orderly means.” He added, “Never in my life have I broken a law or advised others to do so.”
Unlike Trump, who nurses grievances daily, the article said of Debs, “Nothing embitters him. Injustice, oppression, persecution, savagery do not embitter him. It is a stirring, an uplifting thing to find a man who has suffered so much and remains so ardent and so pure.”
The U.S. government and the prison warden made small accommodations to Debs’ candidacy. He was, for one, allowed a single written message per week to voters.
“Where Debs had once stormed the country in a verbal torrent,” wrote Ernest Freeberg, author of Democracy’s Prisoner, “he would now have five hundred words a week.”
Debs still had some of the trappings of a political campaign, including a button that had his photo from prison with the words, “For President - Convict No. 9653.” He had printed material that said, “From Atlanta to the White House, 1920,” a reference to his residency inside the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary.
On election night, Debs received the results in the warden’s office and soon conceded the election to President-elect Warren Harding.
In his book Walls and Bars, Debs wrote that the question came up in the room about his potential ability to pardon himself as president — an action over which Trump has reportedly mused.
“We all found some mirth in debating it,” Debs wrote.
Serving as president from prison
If Trump ran a successful campaign from jail or prison, is there anything stopping him from assuming the Oval Office if he were elected president?
“There is nothing in our traditions or the Constitution that prevents someone who is indicted or convicted or, in fact, serving in jail, from also serving as the president,” said Harold Krent, law professor at the Chicago-Kent College of Law, who formerly worked for the Department of Justice. “Does it make any sense? No. But there is no Constitutional disablement from that happening. So, you could think of a scenario in which the case goes to trial, maybe after the primary and results in a prison time with President Trump and then he is inaugurated, and he gets to serve as president from some prison farm somewhere.”
Lichtman said “of course” Trump would just pardon himself of any federal crimes were he reelected president. There’s also the possibility of Trump attempting to preemptively pardon himself, with then-President Gerald Ford’s pardoning of Richard Nixon serving as an imperfect template.
But if Trump is convicted on any state-level charges, where federal pardons do not apply, that’s a different story.
“That's unprecedented, but the pardon power is pretty absolute,” Lichtman. “He can’t pardon himself for the New York case because that’s a state case. If he's convicted in New York, he's stuck. If ... he's convicted in Georgia, he can’t pardon himself from that either, because that's also a state case.”
Trump’s ability to pardon himself is widely debated in the academic community, Krent said.Federal document listing indictment counts against former President Donald Trump. U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida
“There's no law on the books that says you can't. You just have to reason from the idea of separation of powers and the Constitution or to think that it doesn't make any sense to have one person aggregate or accumulate so much power,” Krent said. “As a constitutional matter, I think that that would be too much of a conflict of interest to be able to pardon yourself.”
Interestingly, the classified documents federal indictment didn’t include counts related to 18 U.S.Code 2071, which deals with the concealment, removal or destruction of government documents. This would disqualify anyone found in violation of the code from running for office, Rahmani said.
“That particular provision was passed after Nixon as a disqualification provision that prevents anyone convicted of it from holding public office,” Rahmani said. “Trump's lawyers would have said that it's unconstitutional because only the Constitution can place limits on who could be president. You can be a felon. You can be in prison and still theoretically be president of the United States.”
The Constitution could be interpreted — ostensibly by the U.S. Supreme Court — that an imprisoned president wouldn’t qualify as capable of carrying out his duties, preventing him from taking the office, Ravel said.
“There's nothing to stop him from becoming president either because the provisions in the Constitution about the presidency and the requirements for presidency don't reflect any concern if a president has been indicted or is in jail,” Ravel said. “Although if he goes to jail, it would create a problem for him because the Constitution does have concerns about the inability to carry out the obligations of the office, which he certainly wouldn't be able to do in jail.”
Specifically, Section 4 of the Constitution’s 25th Amendment potentially empowers Congress to determine — via a two-thirds vote of both chambers — that a president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office” and thereby transfer presidential powers to the vice president.
But if Trump is elected in November, and trials end up taking place after the general election, some of his legal peril could subside — at least at the federal level.
“There's clear Department of Justice memos and policies. It's pretty clear that a sitting president cannot be prosecuted,” Rahmani said.
If Trump won and was convicted but on appeal, he would “probably” still be able to get inaugurated, Krent said.
“The question is whether they would stop the appeal and let him serve out the presidency before it would continue,” Krent said. “Uncharted waters in terms of how this would go. It's gonna affect the primary. It would affect the general election, and it certainly would affect his ability to conduct a presidency.”
Editor’s note: A version of this article was originally published on June 13, 2023, and has been updated to reflect numerous legal and political developments involving Trump.
Former President Donald Trump’s legal team wants to try a presidential immunity claim slapped down in one case as a defense in another, according to a new report and court records.
Trump’s attorneys Tuesday gave notice to Judge Aileen Cannon — the Florida federal judge overseeing his classified documents case — that they plan to file presidential immunity arguments, CNN was first to report.
“Although the defense is still evaluating potential motions,” write attorneys Todd Blanche and Chris Kise, “we expect to file motions on February 22 relating to, inter alia, presidential immunity.”
This announcement arrived the same day the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals tossed Trump’s presidential immunity defense in special counsel Jack Smith’s election interference case, CNN notes.
Trump has pleaded not guilty in both and has said he plans to appeal the D.C. ruling.
The Florida case has a May court date but back-and-forth between opposing sides could cause future delays.
This case pertains to more than a hundred classified documents FBI agents say they found scattered across Mar-a-Lago during a search in August 2022, about a year and a half after his presidential term had ended.
Investigators said they found government documents at various times had been stored in a ballroom, bathroom and shower, among other place.
Trump faces 37 criminal counts that include willful retention of national defense information, conspiracy to obstruct justice, corruptly concealing a document or record and concealing a document in a federal investigation.
This Tuesday, the judge presiding over Donald Trump's classified documents case granted a request from his lawyers to unseal a number of classified documents related to the case -- a move that was opposed by Special Counsel Jack Smith.
Cannon's ruling stated that Smith failed "to identify the information at issue, provide any explanation about the nature of the investigation, or explain how disclosure of the code name would prejudice or jeopardize the integrity of the separate investigation (assuming it remains ongoing)."
Atlanta-based trial attorney Ted Spaulding told Newsweek that any effort to have Cannon removed likely won't be successful.
""Certainly, it could lead to a motion by the prosecution to have the judge removed from the case since it appears the prosecution has already hinted at such a potential filing," Spaulding said.
"In my opinion, it would be surprising if the judge is actually removed based on a delay-of-case argument," he continued. "Usually, judges are only removed for conflicts of interest or other egregious behaviors in the case. Most state's procedural rules build in quite a bit of discretion in how the sitting judge handles discovery and deadlines in a case."
Former President Donald Trump arrives for his arraignment at Manhattan Criminal Court on April 04 in New York City. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
Trump's campaign is selling these black-and-white ceramic coffee mugs for $24. (Screen grab)
Illustration of Eugene Debs while running for president in prison. Indiana State University archives
Federal document listing indictment counts against former President Donald Trump. U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida