A legal expert explained Friday what outstanding presidential immunity-related questions may have prompted a three-week delay in pre-trial hearings in Donald Trump's 2020 election fraud case.
Judge Tanya Chutkan granted special counsel Jack Smith's request to delay the case as it reviews the Supreme Court's immunity ruling. Trump's team did not oppose such a delay.
Speaking to reporter Ali Vitali, MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin said unanswered questions likely led to the pause.
"At the Department of Justice, there is a divergence of opinions about what the best way forward is," she began. "You can look at the fact that there have been several weeks since the supreme court opinion, and save yourself as maybe Meryl Streep's character did, why is no one ready?!"
On the other hand, Rubin said the lack of information makes it difficult to find the "appropriate path forward."
"We know that the former president is entitled to a rebuttable presumption of immunity for his official acts. Think about how much of that wasn't clarified by the court. What counts as an official act?" she asked. "If you can rebut the presumption, how are you supposed to do that? What evidence counts as sufficient to rebut that presumption? What factors should a court consider?"
Those questions give her a broader understanding of why Smith might be scratching his head about the next steps.
She said there's a nearly zero percent chance the case heads to a trial by the election.
"Prosecutors are always thinking about how to ensure that the case gets tried. Of course, the election is a deadline that matters because if former President Trump is reelected, there is a general assumption that he will make this case go away once he is inaugurated again," said Rubin. That doesn't appear to the Justice Department's focus.
The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals will hear the appeal about Donald Trump's classified documents case on Aug. 27.
See the comments from Rubin below or at the link here.
Over the course of the past year, the relationships between law, politics and justice in our contemporary democratic republic have been torn open. We’ve all witnessed firsthand how each of the criminal indictments of former President Donald Trump have struggled to be adjudicated in their respective jurisdictions.
In effect, these criminal cases have all demonstrated just how arbitrary and capricious the rule of law can be when subject to the decisions of unprincipled and unscrupulous jurists of the highest courts in the land. Or, more pointedly: When legal conflicts are resolved by corrupt political hacks trying to pass themselves off as neutral umpires calling balls and strikes as they interpret constitutional law, we’re in for some serious civic trouble.
More than a year removed from the last of Trump’s four criminal indictments, only one of these has gone to trial.
One might argue that in the interim, Trump’s criminal justice and substantive crimes have been hijacked from the American people by the Supreme Court, which this year granted Trump significant presidential immunity rights. You be the judge of whether the high court’s ruling came down for the primary purpose of making Trump’s alleged criminal wrongdoing disappear.
In fact, it is now quite likely that Trump’s three pending criminal cases and straightforward violations of the criminal law will never go to trial.
Say even one or more of these remaining cases eventually finds their way to trial. And say that Trump is found guilty of felonies.
That may very well not be the final resolution of these matters as we have learned from Trump’s Manhattan hush money case. This is because an anti-democratic alliance of Boss Trump, the GOP and the MAGA majority of the Supreme Court has worked to ensure that justice for Trump is delayed indefinitely, no matter the evidence against him and no matter what a jury of his peers determines.
Anyone who believes no president is above the law should recoil: The Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of presidential immunity — and against the Constitution in order to protect the insurrectionary and treasonous behavior of Trump — is to date the most radical expression of weaponizing the law this nation has seen in decades. Or beyond.
Where do Trump’s cases stand?
At this point in time, only the first of these criminal indictments has gone the distance and was decided by a jury of Trump’s peers — or so we thought.
After a New York jury this past spring issued guilty verdicts on each of Trump’s 34 falsification of business records counts — each stemming from his interfering in the 2016 presidential election by paying hush money to a porn star with whom he allegedly had an affair — I more than suggested that “Justice delayed is not always justice denied.”
Boy was I wrong.
At the end of the 2023-24 Supreme Court term, the MAGA majority of justices had ruled to the surprise of virtually every knowledgeable person on Earth that Trump enjoyed presidential immunity from criminal prosecution whether he committed his offenses during, after or even before his presidency.
Who knew? Certainly not the authors of the Declaration of Independence or the fathers of the U.S. Constitution – the only “originalists” if there ever were any.
In the wake of the Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity, Trump’s “lawyers are urging the judge in the New York hush money case to overturn his conviction and dismiss the case.” In addition to other legal arguments, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has responded that the immunity ruling has “no bearing on this prosecution” because the lawsuit was about conduct and events that occurred before Trump became president.
Even if Trump’s lawyers are correct about this new law after the crime, the case should still be immune from the decision. Just as a person cannot face criminal punishment except for an act that was criminalized by law before the act was performed – the principle known as “no crime without a law” — a person should not be exonerated or exempt from criminal punishment because of a “new law after the crime.”
Judge Juan Merchan has told the parties that he will issue his decision by Sept. 6. I am confident that he will rule against Trump and that sentencing should be on schedule for Sept. 18. However, I am also confident that Trump’s legal team will appeal that decision. And, even if that appeal does not delay sentencing, Trump's attorneys will file additional appeals to overturn the sentence — prison time remains a possibility, even if it’s unlikely — as well as to toss the case out for a second time.
A courtroom sketch by the artist Jarvaland of former President Donald Trump and Justice Juan Merchan at the former president's criminal hush money trial. (Courtesy of Jarvaland)
Meanwhile, in the election interference case in the District of Columbia, Judge Tanya Chutkan will soon be reclaiming jurisdiction to assess whether the charges brought by the special counsel Jack Smith fall within or outside of the new guidelines of presidential immunity.
Of course, if Chutkan rules in favor of the prosecution, Trump will appeal that decision as well.
Smith has appealed this ruling to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and has not yet asked the 11th Circuit to expedite this case. Thus, in all likelihood, a hearing before Cannon will not occur before sometime in the middle of October. Some time afterwards she will undoubtedly rule in favor of Trump. Then, the special counsel will appeal her decision.
And so it goes: “Procedural justice” at work delaying and stymying “substantive justice.”
None of these appeals will ultimately be resolved for months if not years after the November election. The same can also be assumed should Trump file an appeal to toss out the Fulton County Georgia RICO case — this time for prosecutorial immunity rather than as he has previously done for the violation of his First Amendment rights.
So we now find ourselves in a situation where long before justice delayed is no longer justice denied, the American voters will decide.
As former U.S. prosecutor for the Southern District of Alabama and distinguished professor at the University of Alabama School of Law, Joyce Vance, has written: “Trump now faces prosecutors both in the courtroom and in the court of public opinion, where voters will decide whether to send a felon” — or, instead, a prosecutor in presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris — to the White House.
In a nation that has seen the value of the rule of law diminished by the MAGA Supreme Court, the choice seems rather clear.
A former federal prosecutor says the federal judge in Washington, D.C. who was just re-handed former President Donald Trump's 2020 election fraud case is now tasked with picking "through the wreckage" left by the Supreme Court — and deciding what is evidence, and what is not.
Elie Honig, former assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, joined CNN's "The Source" with host Kaitlan Collins on Friday night to discuss the case, which returned to the hands of Judge Tanya Chutkan.
The federal case was brought by special counsel Jack Smith over the Jan. 6 attack at the Capitol. The High Court sent the case back to Chutkan about a month ago after ruling presidential immunity exists and that presidents are immune for "official acts." The case returns to the trial judge, Chutkan, who is tasked with determining what is an official act — "and therefore out of the case," Honig said — and what's an unofficial or private act that can remain in the case.
"So she's gotta figure out which falls into which column," he said.
Honig noted that prosecutors can't charge or even mention certain pieces of evidence now following the ruling, such as alleged conversations between Trump and his then-attorney general Bill Barr or his vice president, Mike Pence. Honig questioned whether Smith can tell a "coherent narrative" after the pieces of evidence subject to immunity are "pulled out."
"It's like if I told you, 'You have to tell the story of the 'Wizard of Oz,' but you can't even mention the Lion or The Tin Man,'" he said.
Honig also laid out a timeline of what people should expect moving forward — including the days leading up to the election.
"This will not be tried before the election," he said.
If Chutkan tried to get the parties in court hearings in the upcoming weeks and attempted to go to trial, Honig said, Trump can take his case back to the Supreme Court to challenge whatever the trial judge found.
What could happen, however, is Chutkan could have a hearing — no trial, no jury, no verdict — and hear the prosecution's evidence. Chutkan could, he said, decide what qualifies for immunity and what does not.
"And in that hearing, the prosecution may try to call explosive witnesses, including potentially Mark Meadows, maybe Mike Pence — and this could be happening in the next few weeks as we get close to the election," he said.
In such a scenario, Honig said Trump would likely have the option to appear at the hearing.
"He probably will be allowed to skip it if he's out on the trail, but the timing here, Kaitlan, I mean, we're what, 95 days now? Imagine Mike Pence taking the stand in the middle of September. The impact that would have," he said.
Donald Trump has always been terrified by the thought of going to prison. At the same time, his fear of imprisonment has always been mitigated by his Houdini-like ability to evade the administration of criminal justice.
Ergo, Trump’s myriad repeated motions — legitimate and illegitimate — to delay or dismiss his four criminal trials from ever coming to fruition.
These tactics have always been motivated by Trump’s shamelessness and dogged determination to keep his never-ending lawlessness and scamming alive. In order to do so, he must keep his derriere unincarcerated and/or return to the White House as the 47th president of the United States.
Trump has also been more afraid of the Manhattan criminal case than the other criminal cases slated for courtrooms in Florida, Georgia and Washington, D.C.
This is because Trump has correctly or incorrectly believed that, in those cases, there would likely be one juror or more out of 12 that would emerge to prevent guilty verdicts — remember: they must be unanimous — from materializing.
Up until now and before the selection of the criminal jury begins on Monday in The People of the State of New York vs. the former POTUS, did Trump ever have to seriously confront the reality of criminal imprisonment for one day, let alone, for the rest of his life.
According to New York law, if convicted of the 34 criminal counts each subject to as many as four years of imprisonment to be served consecutively, Trump could be looking at as many as 136 years of captivity.
Realistically, that would never happen to Trump — or anyone else for this type of election interference, campaign corruption and financial criminality. For any other average person convicted on all of the counts, the sentence would probably be from two to four years, served concurrently.
This penal leniency in sentencing will come from a judge who has endured months of Boss Trump railing against him and repeatedly attacking his daughter. This unseemly behavior finally resulted in a “gag order” from the judge to protect his offspring. It also resulted in another frivolous denied motion to an appellate court by one very desperate Trump hoping for a stay or looking for any kind of delay.
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan in 2011. Marc A. Hermann/New York Daily News/TNS
My reasoning about Merchan’s leniency is twofold:
First, Merchan — like Judge Scott McAfee in the Fulton County, Ga., case against Trump and U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan overseeing the Jan. 6 case in D.C. — have all been adjudicating fairly. They have also been bending over backwards on behalf of Trump for a variety of reasons.
(This is in stark contrast to Judge Aileen Cannon overseeing the Florida stolen classified documents case who has been acting unfairly on behalf of Trump and with malice against the prosecution.)
Second, unlike Trump’s three other criminal cases I cannot imagine any judge sentencing a former president to prison for the Manhattan crimes.
But home confinement — however luxurious — would nevertheless mean Trump loses his freedom.
Up to now most thinking people have supposed that the Manhattan trial would be the least significant of the four criminal trials Trump is facing as he runs for president here in 2024.
Compared to the three other trials – two about Trump’s effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and one for allegedly stealing classified documents and obstructing justice – the charges, on balance, don’t seem as legally or politically fraught.
However, the significance of the Manhattan criminal trial both legally and politically is about to make history.
There are several reasons for this.
For openers: time.
The misleading “hush money”-labeled criminal case has become not only the first but possibly the only criminal trial of Trump to be resolved before people start voting, which in some parts of the country will be in September.
Unlike the other three criminal matters that occurred during or after his presidency, the issues at play in the Manhattan trial occurred in 2016. They took place just weeks before the 2016 election and immediately after the release of theAccess Hollywood tape, which revealed Trump making lewd and obscene comments about women.
Although the former president’s falsification of business documents and his fraudulent payments for services rendered continued like monthly clockwork during the first year of the Trump administration.
Importantly, unlike the three other criminal indictments that were “speaking indictments,” or went beyond the elements of the charges, the Manhattan indictment following New York law did not. It only provided the minimal identification or listing of the 34 counts against Trump.
For example, without the lengthy and detailed indictments laying out the evidence in greater detail, most Americans do not understand why the misdemeanor crimes of paying off one porn star and one playboy bunny to keep them silent about their sexual liaisons with Trump became felony crimes.
Similarly, this case also involves election interference and campaign fraud – the kind that may have helped Trump get elected president in the first place, in 2016. In other words, this case is not merely about falsifying business documents and tax records.
Trump’s interference in the 2016 presidential election was not limited to the burying of negative information that at the time would have been detrimental to his campaign victory, but it also includes evidence of Trump paying his then-”fixer” Michael Cohen to hire an IT firm to rig early CNBC and Drudge polls to favor Trump in 2015 — and then stiffing RedFinch Solutions $50,000 for its services rendered.
Not unlike the House Select Committee’s public hearings on January 6, where all the witnesses who testified against Trump were from the former president’s inner circles, the same will essentially be the case in the Manhattan trial. At this trial, we can expect several of the witnesses testifying against Trump to be part of the conspiracy to cover up his sexual affairs from wife Melania as well as the general public — a general public that may have voted differently had they known Trump was cheating on the future first lady with an adult film actress.
Unlike the House Select Committee hearings, which were televised but paid attention to by about 23 percent of the electorate and changed few opinions about Trump’s culpability, the untelevised criminal trial in Manhattan will be followed much more closely by most Americans.. And whether convicted by a jury of his peers or set free by a hung jury, Trump stands to suffer significantly from some six weeks of gavel-to-gavel news coverage of his criminal behavior.
As the Manhattan trial is about to get underway, there does seem to be some poetic justice at play. Just as District Attorney Alvin Bragg was the first to bring a criminal indictment against a former president of the United States he has also become the first law enforcement official to criminally prosecute the 45th president of the Untied States.
It is also worth noting that Bragg had no problem with any of the other criminal cases going ahead of his trial as he has always regarded the 34 felony criminal counts in the Manhattan case as ordinary or garden variety white-collar crimes. Rather than the more serious crimes involved in Trump’s three other criminal prosecutions.
On the one hand, I am feeling good that people will finally learn all about election interference and the “catch and kill” scheme that is at the heart of the Manhattan trial. Not to mention the collaboration between Trump and the National Enquirer news organization.
On the other hand, I am disappointed that Bragg’s team of prosecutors had not investigated deeper, or if they had done so, that they had decided not to bring additional counts against Trump involving another type of election interference.
To recap where we are with respect to legal accountability and the administration of criminal justice for the 2024 presumptive nomination for president:
In the short term, as the Manhattan trial finally begins, the Liar-in-Chief and his lawyers' efforts to delay, disrupt, and discredit one of the four criminal cases against Trump have at long last been exhausted.
In the longer term, at least for now, Trump and the GOP’s repetitive attacks to delegitimize the justice system and rule of law as a whole, as well as their efforts to spread fear throughout those institutions tasked with holding Trump accountable for his anti-democratic behavior, are still alive and unwell.
Hopefully, the Manhattan trial will begin to turn the tide against Republican lawlessness, corruption and authoritarianism.
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 Donald Trump lawyer Michael Cohen was spotted walking into the offices of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg late last week, a source present there — who requested their name be withheld to speak freely about the scene — told Raw Story.
Cohen's presence at Bragg's office comes amid a swirl of legal action among Donald Trump's four separate criminal trials. And it further fuels speculation that the 34-count Stormy Daniels hush money case, in which Bragg alleges Trump falsified business records, will leapfrog the other cases and go first.
At its core, the hush money case — with its salacious accusations that Trump paid off adult film star Daniels to keep their sexual affair quiet — is about election interference during the 2016 campaign. Cohen has now spoken to New York Attorney General Letitia James and D.A. Bragg several times.
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan pulled the March 4 trial date for Trump's 2020 election interference case off her court's calendar. A federal appeals court is considering Trump's assertion that he is immune from charges, brought by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith, that he worked to illegally overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. It's a ruling that, when it comes, is expected to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Legal analyst Norm Eisen told CNN on Sunday that he expects that while this federal-level election interference case will likely unfold sometime before the 2024 election, the Supreme Court could add further delays. It would be yet another pause that would benefit Trump's ongoing requests to hold off all trials until after the 2024 election, in which he is all but certain to be the Republican presidential nominee running against President Joe Biden in a rematch of their 2020 race.
And in Georgia, allies of Trump dug up information on District Attorney Fani Willis that has allowed for delays in that case as well. While Willis isn't likely to step down from the case, added hearings contribute to a timeline that could mean delays for the ultimate trial date.
It all likely leaves the Bragg case at the front of the line for the time being.
Trump, who faces 91 felony counts across all four cases, says he is innocent.
As the Peabody Award-winning television producer and founding editor of Mediaite, Colby Hall, has written, his “creepy and messianic bit of messaging” has caused “many to cringe but others to fall to their knees in supplication.”
Many people, however, have also found the video to be comical if not satirical.
Perhaps many more persons have found it to be crazy, irrational or senseless.
So why would Trump and company post a “satirical” version of Paul Harvey’s famous “So God Made a Farmer” video in which Trump, whose religious bona fidesaredubious at best, is playing the role of God’s son?
It all goes back to 2015 when political pundits, social commentators and just about everybody else, for that matter, were all surprised to learn that the lifelong amoral, pro-abortion, pro-homosexual Democratic campaign contributor had become the beloved favorite of the evangelical community.
This inversion of Trump’s personal biography involved a lot of hard effort and energy on the former president’s part, not to mention his promise to appoint conservative judges to low and high courts alike, and to do his best to fight against abortion, gender, civil and human rights for all.
But, ultimately, it also came down to arguably one of Trump’s greatest con jobs.
It all occurred on the 25th floor of Trump Tower in a meeting arranged by Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney and fixer and presently one of Trump’s leading antagonists. Cohen had called in an IOU from Jerry and Becki Falwell. At this meeting, Trump was able to play to the desires and vanities of some of the nation’s celebrity evangelicals, including Jerry Falwell Jr., Pastor Darrell Scott, and the Rev. Robert Jeffress. Trump convinced them that he had experienced a moment of conversion.
As some of those in attendance such as Johnnie Moore — the unofficial leader of Trump’s evangelical advisory board — had been quoted, “I absolutely believe he’s a born-again Christian.” Or, as the Rev. Franklin Graham, faith adviser to Trump’s White House and son of the late Billy Graham, stated, “I think there’s no question that he believes.”
As Cohen writes in his first book on Trump, Disloyal: A Memoir, a few minutes after all of the evangelical leaders had ritualistically laid their hands on Trump’s germophobic body and were descending from Trump Tower, Donald popped into Cohen’s office and had this to say, “Can you believe people believe that bulls—?”
In other words, Trump had learned that even though he never made a pretense to being a religious person before running for office beginning in 2015 that he was still able to establish an ardent support from evangelical voters both in 2016 and 2020. He even enjoyed more support than traditional conservative Republican candidates and presidents such as Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush had, vis-à-vis what we can only refer to as the “conversion” con.
Religious scholars tell us that this has less to do with the qualities of the candidates/presidents themselves and more to do with the changing identities of evangelical voters, per the New York Times.
In the past, being evangelical “suggested regular church attendance, a focus on salvation…Today, it is often used to describe a cultural and political identity” in which “Christians are considered a persecuted minority” and “traditional institutions are viewed skeptically,” including church.
Enter Donald Trump, “the savior” for those new white American voters who had become evangelical Christians during his presidency, according to a 2021 Pew Research Center analysis.
Relatedly: Trump, who understands the polls perhaps as well as most pollsters do, also understands the social construction of “alternative realities.” He’s also a master of the “art of the con,” or the interplay of three characteristics — gullibility, absurdity and believability — that he uses to captivate his cultish followers.
For instance, Trump knows that according to polls from November 2023 that more Republicans believe Trump is a person of faith compared to Joe Biden — a church-going Irish Catholic who has worn religion on his sleeve for most of his 81 years.
Trump also understands that throughout U.S. history the most successful con men have all relied on these three characteristics of their victims They range from Jefferson Randolph “Soapy” Smith II in the mid-19th century to Charles Ponzi in the 1920s to Bernie Madoff and Donald Trump himself more recently.
Ironically, even when the “jig is up” with 91 felony counts pending against the former president across four criminal cases, most of his “marks” (or victims), who have been deceived with the exception of those who may have been financially or emotionally ruined or imprisoned because of their fraudulent experience, will tend to excuse this fraudster-in-chief rationalizing or excusing his behavior one way or the other. Trump will fashion himself a victim of persecution by Biden and the imaginary Deep State, and most of his most ardent supporters will agree.
Meanwhile, there is the sardonic underside of Trump’s messianic messaging playing out in real time. I am referring specifically to the ongoing threats and violent crimes against agents of law enforcement, including the doxxing and swatting of those “enemies” of the savior Donald Trump, such as special counsel Jack Smith and Judge Tanya Chutkan.
All of which underscores that the upcoming criminal trials — whenever they finally occur — will not only be about various “crime scenes” surrounding Trump and his associates’ attempts to steal an election or engage in fraud from the past. They will also be about various “crimes in progress” such as obstructing justice or intimidating witnesses.
The only thing that will break this spell, as Trump fully knows as well from the polls, will be his inevitable criminal convictions by juries of his peers.
Ergo, the Trump legal team’s one and only procedural strategy or legal defense has been to delay, delay and delay these trials from occurring until after the November 2024 presidential election.
But with prosecutors pushing for swift justice and courts seemingly receptive to relatively speedy trials, Trump will need a serious prayer to get his wish.
The former president ranted about Special Counsel Jack Smith’s potentially damning new court filing in an oddly-capitalized and run-on sentence-ridden screed posted Wednesday to Truth Social.
“Crooked Joe Biden’s errand boy, Deranged Jack Smith, is obsessed with attacking your favorite President, me, and with interfering in the 2024 Presidential Election, which I am Dominating,” Trump declared, before addressing the new motion filed by Smith's team.
“Today’s pathetic motion is not just Illegal, it is also another Unconstitutional attempt to take away my First Amendment Rights, and to prevent me from saying the TRUTH — that all of these Hoaxes are nothing but a political persecution of me, the MAGA Movement, and the Republican Party by Crooked Joe and his Despicable Thugs.”
Trump then declared himself the victim of “The Radical Left Communists, Marxists, and Fascists” who he believes are attempting to silence him.
“The government is making clear they have testimony from Trump lawyers and/or members of Congress,” Rubin wrote. “Gulp.”
Rubin notes that Judge Tanya Chutkan placed a stay on court proceedings until a higher court decides whether Trump can argue presidential immunity in the Washington D.C. case.
“Smith et al promised they would keep meeting their pre-trial deadlines, to Team Trump’s angry rebuke, which amounted to, ‘A stay means a stay,’” Rubin wrote.
That message appears more bluntly in Trump’s Wednesday message.
“Deranged Jack is so Viciously and Desperately Angry that the Supreme Court just unanimously rejected his flailing attempt to rush this Witch Hunt, that he is ignoring the Law and clear instructions from the D.C. Court that this ‘case’ should be stayed, and there cannot be any more filings,” wrote Trump in the posting.
“The American People don’t want them destroying our Country," Trump concluded. "Make America Great Again!”
A government official was forced to flee his home after one former President Donald Trump’s supporter shared his address online, according to information revealed in an unredacted gag order issued Wednesday.
The new version of Judge Tanya Chutkan’s partial gag order was released by a federal appeals court in Trump’s Washington D.C. election interference case, the Messenger was first to report.
The original 68-page order, issued by a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals on Dec. 8, included three pages with blacked out information, the Messenger notes.
Multiple state and local officials faced security threats after they were targeted by Trump or his supporters, the new version shows.
That blacked-out portion also details a state official who decided to stop making public comments after Trump tweeted about him because it was “the safest thing to do.”
These anecdotes were presented to the panel as they considered whether or not to uphold the judge's October gag order against Trump, which they ultimately decided to do.
Trump has appealed the ruling, but remains free to criticize the Biden Administration, the Justice department, and Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team.
The former president has pleaded not guilty to felony charges that he obstructed the 2020 presidential election.
Attorneys for Donald Trump have asked the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to give the former president a second chance to appeal a limited gag order in his election subversion case.
In a filing on Monday, attorneys John Lauro, Todd Blanche, and D. John Sauer argued that a three-judge panel violated Supreme Court precedent when it found that D.C. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan correctly placed a gag order on participants in the trial.
"The opinion holds that President Trump must be silenced to protect trial participants from possible threats or 'harassment' from unrelated third parties," the filing noted. "In doing so, the opinion conflicts with decisions of the Supreme Court and other Circuits, warranting en banc consideration both to secure uniformity of this Court's decisions and because of the question's exceptional importance."
"The prosecution presented no evidence of any threats or harassment to any prosecutor, potential witness, or court staffer," the document stated, "the only people protected by the gag order—during the case's months-long pendency. Likewise, the prosecution presented no evidence that any prosecutor, potential witness, or court staffer felt intimidated by President Trump's speech, despite the prosecution's unique access to such persons."
Earlier this month, the three-judge panel largely upheld Chutkan's gag order but narrowed it slightly.
"We agree with the district court that some aspects of Mr. Trump's public statements pose a significant and imminent threat to the fair and orderly adjudication of the ongoing criminal proceeding," Judge Patricia Millett noted in an order on Friday.
Trump pledged to appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.
A courtroom sketch by the artist Jarvaland of former President Donald Trump and Justice Juan Merchan at the former president's criminal hush money trial. (Courtesy of Jarvaland)
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan in 2011. Marc A. Hermann/New York Daily News/TNS
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