The courts will deal with indicted Donald Trump
The First Time a New President Has Been Charged: An Empirical Warning to the Juvenile Court of the U.S. Supreme Court
This is the first time that Trump has been criminally charged and the first time that any former president has been charged. As such, we are entering uncharted territory.
Americans have to set aside their politics when deciding on cases in the legal system. The system has benefits even though Mr. Trump advocated for his enemies to be investigated by the F.B.I., or face the death penalty. No jury should give him any special privileges as a former president. He should have to follow the same procedures as any other citizen.
The author is a former federal prosecutor, adjunct professor of clinical law at New York University School of Law, lecturer-in-law and a CNN legal analyst. The opinions expressed here are her own. Read more opinion at CNN.
The district attorney in Manhattan was investigating Trump in connection with the scandal surrounding Stormy Daniels, who claimed that Trump had paid her to stay quiet about her relationship with him.
If Trump succeeds in pushing the trial into 2075, then the case against him should be thrown out because the 2000 Justice Department guidance says that a president can’t be indicted.
And if Trump is convicted and sentenced to prison before the election (or after winning it but before he takes office), his inability to fulfill the duties of the office may prompt efforts to remove him. If he chooses, Trump can continue as a candidate.
Of course, running a campaign while facing charges will be politically and logistically challenging, to say the least. Any requests for delays in the litigation schedule to accommodate campaigning, debates or other election-related events will be heard and decided by the assigned judge, who controls the case calendar, but it’s difficult to imagine a judge granting significant delays for this purpose.
The first steps are for Trump to be formally arrested and brought to court to be arraigned on the indictment. During that hearing, the court will address issues like bail and the setting of a preliminary hearing date, if necessary, to determine whether prosecutors have amassed enough evidence to move forward to trial.
I expect that Trump’s lawyers will agree to a voluntary surrender in Manhattan, instead of forcing officials to coordinate an arrest with local law enforcement in Florida – and for Trump to be released pending trial. The agreements between the prosecutors and the former president’s counsel are likely to end here.
It is possible that Trump and his attorneys will seek a preliminary hearing where prosecutors would have to present evidence that a crime has been committed.
Our legal system is governed by precedent and replete with opportunities for defendants to litigate and appeal many of the issues that Trump will surely advance. The New York judges who will be involved in the case are likely to consider matters that are unresolved by the courts, because Trump claims that he is the former president. Taken together, all of this will stretch out the time it takes for courts to deliberate and rule on these claims.
Some claims, like the suggestion recently made by Trump’s lawyer that the then-presidential candidate paid Daniels not to benefit his campaign, but to avoid personal embarrassment, are questions of fact for the jury and can be resolved at trial without the need for pretrial litigation.
Trump is expected to have allegations of prosecutorial misconduct and selective prosecution, as well as his possible reliance on an advise of counsel of defense and likely legal challenges to the prosecutors theory of the case.
Trump’s scorched-earth approach very well may involve filing separate legal challenges, as happened when the Justice Department conducted its search of Mar-a-Lago for classified documents last year and Trump asked for a special master to screen any seized documents.
That move ultimately failed, but it set back the investigation for months while a special master conducted an entirely unnecessary review of documents before the appellate court reversed Judge Aileen Cannon’s legally problematic ruling.
Trump: Why a grand jury can’t prosecute a criminal indictment during a presidential primary run? The Montanoro area
The area of Montanoro. You know, you’d think that an indictment would hurt someone running for office, but Trump seems to have insulated himself with his base, you know, convincing them that these are trumped up charges. Our poll, the NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll, this week showed that a majority – 57% – said the criminal investigations into him are fair. 8 in 10 Republicans agree with Trump and call the investigations a witch hunt, so it’s important when it comes to a presidential primary. You know, a Quinnipiac poll out yesterday found that a majority of people say criminal charges should disqualify Trump from running for president. But three-quarters of Republicans don’t agree with that.
You know, Trump’s air of grievance is that the left is out for him, that his own supporters are out to get, and that the system is rigged.
And to Trump’s messaging, two-thirds of people overall think that the charges in New York are not that serious, and 6 in 10 say the investigation is politically motivated. This is not something done by a prosecutor or a judge but by a grand jury. A grand jury hears evidence from a prosecutor and decides if there’s enough there to indict a suspect. And, you know, if it’s a conspiracy, you know, a jury of his peers appears to be in on it.
MONTANARO: Not really. I mean, Richard Nixon, former president, never faced charges because Gerald Ford controversially pardoned him. You have to go all the way back to 1872 in order to find a president who was arrested. President Grant was arrested for speeding with his carriage in D.C. Trump is the first former American president to be charged with a crime.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/03/30/1167254662/trumps-historic-indictment-comes-during-his-presidential-primary-run
Trump’s brand is toxic in the first two years of his presidency, and it’s a wild card for the rest of the country
So that’s a pretty big wild card, especially when, according to our poll, a significant number of people ranked preserving democracy as high on their list of most important issues facing the country. And that’s true of persuadable voters. The Independents ranked preserving democracy second behind the economy. Trump’s brand is toxic in a number of competitive states, and it’s at risk with independents. Majorities don’t have a good opinion of him and believe he shouldn’t be president.
MONTANARO: Very tough to say 80% of them said they had a favorable opinion of Trump. Three-quarters say they want him to be president, and there are not any Republicans who are really making a sustained effort against him.
FLORIDO: Of course, this is a developing story. We look forward to hearing from you over the next few days. Thanks, you know what I mean.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/03/30/1167254662/trumps-historic-indictment-comes-during-his-presidential-primary-run
NPR: A Pre-Kamiokande Program for Superconformal Field Theories with the KLOE Spectrometer at the Fermilab Tevatron
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