As Donald Trump heads to Milwaukee next week for the Republican National Convention — the high point so far of his re-election campaign — the threat he is facing from his four criminal cases has reached what appears to be a low point.
It wasn’t so long ago that Trump confronted a daunting prospect: showing up to accept his party’s nomination for president with perhaps two criminal convictions and possibly a prison sentence hanging around his neck.
But while a jury found him guilty this spring of 34 felony counts in Manhattan, he won’t face punishment for any of those crimes until at least two months from now and seems all but certain to avoid going to trial in any of his three other cases until well after the election in November.
All of that has freed Trump to use the nearly weeklong convention as a launchpad for an election campaign aimed at a second term, where he will denounce what he claims is the “weaponization” of government against him.
While Trump is still facing gag orders that restrict what he can say about some of the participants in his cases, he is headed to Wisconsin feeling bullish about his chances of eventually defeating the indictments brought against him or having the federal cases he is facing dismissed, if he wins the election.
His success so far in fending off the most dire legal consequences is largely a result of his persistent strategy of seeking to delay his cases for as long as possible and the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling this month granting him broad immunity for acts he took in his official role as president.
That one-two punch has effectively permitted him to arrive at his coronation as the Republican nominee with far less legal baggage than expected.
The immunity ruling’s ripple effects
Most immediately, his sentencing hearing in the New York case, which was originally scheduled for today, has been put off until Sept. 18. The hearing was postponed so that Trump’s lawyers and prosecutors in the Manhattan district attorney’s office can debate what effects the Supreme Court’s ruling on immunity might have on the guilty verdict.
The immunity decision emerged from the federal case Trump is facing in Washington, where he stands accused of plotting to subvert the 2020 election. In the end, it may not have much bearing on the conviction in Manhattan, which largely involved Trump’s personal conduct — namely, his efforts to cover up a scandal with a porn star that threatened to derail his first bid for the White House.
Still, his lawyers have argued in court filings that prosecutors built their case at least in part on testimony from former aides like Hope Hicks who worked with him while he was in the White House. Under the Supreme Court’s ruling, prosecutors cannot cite evidence involving a president’s official acts to bolster even accusations based on his personal behavior.
The documents case
Trump’s legal team is also trying to use the immunity decision to slow down his other federal case — the one in Florida where he has been charged with illegally holding on to dozens of classified documents after he left office.
The documents case was already moving at a glacial pace largely because Aileen Cannon, the judge overseeing it, has agreed to a host of time-consuming hearings about nearly all of the defense’s legal arguments, no matter how far-fetched.
Last week, Trump’s lawyers went back to Cannon with a new request, asking her to put the case almost entirely on hold as they battle with the special counsel, Jack Smith, over whether the ruling on immunity should apply to the documents charges.
Trump’s position — that the ruling does apply — is a stretch given that the indictment charges him with willfully holding on to the secret materials after he left the White House and then obstructing the government’s efforts to get them back from his post-presidential residence in Florida.
And yet, there are passages in the indictment that could fall prey to the Supreme Court’s holding precluding any evidence about official acts from being used to prove a case. One of those passages seeks to explain Trump’s knowledge about the sensitivities concerning classified materials by pointing out that “as part of his official duties as president, Trump received intelligence briefings from high-level United States government officials.”
It’s unclear how seriously Cannon will take all of this, including the request by the defense to put the case on hold while the question of immunity is considered. Over and over, she has shown herself willing to grant a serious audience to claims by Trump that many other judges would have rejected out of hand.
The immunity ruling will also reshape Trump’s already stalled criminal case in Georgia, where he stands accused of taking part in a sweeping racketeering conspiracy to tamper with the results of the state’s election.
The election interference case
The one proceeding where there could still be an opportunity for prosecutors to set out their evidence against Trump before voters go to the polls is the election interference case in Washington.
Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over the matter, has been directed by the Supreme Court to sort through the many allegations in the indictment against Trump to determine which can survive and which will have to be tossed out because they arise from official acts he took in office.
That fact-finding mission could lead to a hearing, resembling a mini-trial of sorts, where Smith and his team may get to air some of their evidence against Trump.
Whether there is such a hearing will largely depend on how Chutkan deals with the barrage of motions that Trump’s lawyers plan to file seeking not only to narrow the scope of the proceeding, but also to push it off, as they have done before, until after the election.
Your questions
We’re asking what you’d like to know about the Trump cases: the charges, the procedure, the important players or anything else. You can send us your question by filling out this form.
Wouldn’t a sentence of prison or home incarceration in the hush money case have the same effect of preventing Trump from campaigning and thus be likely to be appealed and overturned? — Bill Feinberg, Cincinnati, Ohio
Alan: No one knows yet if Justice Juan Merchan, who oversaw the hush money case, will sentence Trump to prison or home confinement. The charges don’t require it. But if Trump were to face what’s known as a “custodial” sentence, it may not be imposed on him until after he exhausts his appeals of the underlying conviction. And that would free him up to campaign in the meantime.
What else to watch
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Next week, the special counsel, Jack Smith, is set to respond to Trump’s request to stop the classified documents case in its tracks as the two sides debate whether the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on presidential immunity should apply to it.
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We’ll also be waiting to see if Judge Cannon sets new hearings in Florida on a separate motion by Trump questioning the search of Mar-a-Lago and challenging the way in which Smith got access to highly-sensitive notes from one of Trump’s own lawyers.
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The post A Changed Landscape appeared first on New York Times.
