The defendants in Georgia are already at odds with Trump
The case of Donald Trump: a federal grand jury investigation into criminal activity in the run-of-the-ground campaign in Washington, D.C.
Mr. Trump’s move came as no surprise. The leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination does not want to rush to see the criminal cases against him, for example, the one in Georgia. In the separate federal election interference case Mr. Trump faces in Washington, D.C., his lawyers have asked that the trial start safely beyond November 2024 general election — in April 2026.
RICO can result in a 20 year prison sentence and is a dangerous legal weapon. Out of dozens of possible crimes, a prosecutor may only have to prove two to gain a conviction. The state doesn’t know what constitutes an enterprise. The human brain is already trained to see a pattern in the acts of others, so the jury may be shown a hefty amount of evidence to help them figure it out. For Trump and his team, allowing the case to progress to the point where a jury is actually deliberating RICO is a doomsday scenario.
The indictment is the culmination of a political career that Trump built by ignoring checks and balances, mocking the law and the courts, and cheering on supporters who use violence in his name, including groups rooted in white nationalism and misogyny, prone to spontaneous and premeditated violence. In the past 31 months, more than 1,100 of his most committed supporters have been charged with trying to stop Congress from certifying the results of the election. More than 80 of them have pled guilty to beating police officers who had ordered them to disperse. More than 140 officers were reportedly injured and four of those would die by suicide within 200 days of the event.
These are not Trump’s only casualties. While deceptively trivial in the face of actual death, millions in damages, and election interference, legal experts have long warned that Trump’s personal brand of politics—acrimonious, wielding tools of harassment—is corrosive to the very norms and conventions upon which the electoral process has long relied for stability. Prosecuting Trump could help make distinct lawful election challenges from those considered outright criminal. He was arrested for the purpose of showing that certain political activities are not compatible with democratic norms upheld by the public.
In the Georgia case the removal question was important because it affected the composition of the jury. If the case stays in Fulton County, Ga., the jury will come from a bastion of Democratic politics where Mr. Trump was trounced in 2020. If the case is removed to federal court, the jury will be drawn from a 10-county region of Georgia that is more suburban and rural — and somewhat more Trump-friendly. Because it takes only one not-guilty vote to hang a jury, this modest advantage could prove to be a very big deal.
Already, one defendant’s case is splitting off as a result. Kenneth Chesebro, a lawyer who advised Mr. Trump after the 2020 election, has asked for a speedy trial, and the presiding state judge has agreed to it. His trial was set to begin in October. Another defendant, Sidney Powell, filed a similar motion on Friday, and a third, John Eastman, also plans to invoke his right to an early trial, according to one of his lawyers.
