Donald Trump has spent much of the past month in a Manhattan courtroom, listening to various people from his past—including, most recently, Stormy Daniels—put forth damning testimony in the hush money case against him. But for all of his grimacing and whining about how unfair the whole ordeal is, the former president should consider himself lucky: In every other case against him, Trump is getting all the breaks.
The most recent came Tuesday, when Aileen Cannon—the Trump-appointed Florida judge who was confirmed in the final months of his presidency—announced she was indefinitely postponing the start of his classified documents trial. The delay is apparently necessary to resolve numerous legal questions she herself allowed to “build up on her docket,” as the New York Times’ Alan Feuer put it recently. “Finalization of a trial date at this juncture…would be imprudent and inconsistent with the Court’s duty to fully and fairly consider the various pending pre-trial motions before the Court,” Cannon wrote in an order Tuesday, also citing issues with the Classified Information Procedures Act and “additional pretrial and trial preparations” in her decision.
Cannon’s move could make it less likely that the case, which was scheduled to begin on May 20, will make it to trial before the November election. And, in the event that Trump reclaims the White House from Biden—whom he’s baselessly accused of masterminding the criminal cases he’s wrapped up in—it’s safe to assume that the former president will attempt to put an end to many of them. Perhaps highest on his hit list would be Jack Smith’s election interference case, which is also being subjected to the Trump team’s textbook delay tactics—and threatened by the Supreme Court, whose conservative members seem to be seriously entertaining the former president’s outrageous claims to presidential immunity. Meanwhile, in Georgia, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s state election subversion case could be further upended after an appeals court Wednesday agreed to consider Trump’s request to have her disqualified over her romantic relationship with one of her prosecutors—a move that could delay, if not entirely derail, that prosecution.
Trump hasn’t had as much luck in Alvin Bragg’s felony case against him in Manhattan, where the former president’s outbursts in defiance of his gag order have already led to fines and could lead to time in jail. But it’s unclear how much time behind bars, if any, Trump would face if the Manhattan jury ultimately finds him guilty in the case, which—while historic—is regarded as less severe than the other three.
This isn’t to say that Bragg’s case doesn’t matter: According to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll, a fifth of self-identified Trump supporters say they would either reconsider or withdraw their support from him in the election if he’s convicted—somewhat undercutting the image of political invincibility he tries to project. But that only underscores the fact that if Trump is going to face accountability this year, it will likely have to come at the ballot box—not only in a courtroom.
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