one reason Donald Trump’s trial this month is so remarkable that it’s actually happening. Just last summer, it was revealed that Trump would face four criminal trials ahead of the 2024 election. Twice were in state court and twice in federal court. Today, the state’s hush money case appears likely to be the only one that could reach a jury before November. There is plenty to blame for the delay. But the person who should get much of the blame or credit is Trump himself.
As the media and voters debate whether Trump’s authoritarian tendencies can be kept in check in his next term, Trump is already relieved of his responsibility thanks to judges he appointed during his first term who have dismissed all federal lawsuits against him. It’s important to recognize that you’re going out of your way.
During his presidency, the courts served as a major check on Trump. Most importantly, he and his allies filed dozens of lawsuits across the country seeking to overturn the 2020 election results. When these legal efforts failed, Trump resorted to extralegal means to maintain power, ultimately leading to a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Now Trump-appointed judges are helping him avoid responsibility for these and other actions. The Supreme Court is even considering granting the president a new level of immunity that Trump would enjoy if he takes office. This is not only a measure of how much damage Trump has already done, but also a warning sign of how far those around him are willing to go and how impossible it will be to curb his powerful ambitions if he wins again.
Last summer, Special Prosecutor Jack Smith secured two indictments against Trump. The first targeted the deliberate storage of top secret documents at Mar-a-Lago after his presidency. Trump refused to return all the records, and he then attempted a cover-up, first preventing their return and ultimately impeding their prosecution.
The circumstances of the incident, including confidential documents left in the bathroom and an order to delete security camera footage requested by the grand jury, are shocking. Legally, the case is “absolutely watertight,” Georgia State University constitutional law professor Anthony Michael Kries told the BBC. NYU professor Melissa Murray and former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissman wrote in their book: trump indictmentIn the documented case against Trump, “the evidence of guilt appears to be very clear.”
Still, Trump avoided trial in the strongest case against him thanks solely to the judge overseeing the case. Over the past two years, federal Judge Aileen Cannon has repeatedly shocked the legal community with unprecedented orders that ignore the law, delay proceedings and protect Trump. The former president was fortunate to have Cannon take on the case. But he also helped create his own luck by benching Cannon. When Trump nominated Cannon in 2020, her signature qualifications were her youth (39 years old) and membership in the conservative Federalist Society. After Trump lost her election, she was confirmed in a vote with the support of 12 Democrats.
Cannon first came to Trump’s rescue in 2022 when his lawyers went to federal court to try to stop the Justice Department’s investigation into Trump’s handling of stolen classified documents. The cannon accomplished its mission in spectacular fashion by blocking part of the probe. According to , it was. slate‘s Mark Joseph Stern marks the first time in U.S. history that a judge has intervened to halt a criminal investigation before indictment. Her actions were so illegal that they were soon struck down by two separate panels of the conservative 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. The panel ruled that Cannon had promoted a “radical reorganization of our case law” that violated “fundamental separation of powers restrictions.”
Some judges might have been disciplined for this humiliation, but Cannon was not. After the investigation, it became clear that prosecutors had drawn a straw when Trump was indicted and the docket case was officially assigned to Cannon, and Trump would never be tried under her watch, or at least not a fair trial. Over the past year, Cannon has continued to issue bizarre orders, hold hearings on absurd questions, and impose delays in every way possible. And she shows no signs of stopping. This month she postponed the trial indefinitely, reserving a hearing on a motion filed by Trump’s legal team, which experts say should be dispatched quickly. Cannon turned federal courts into kangaroo courts.
In August 2022, Smith filed a second indictment against Trump, this time attempting to overturn his election loss. The case was assigned to Washington DC federal judge Tanya Chutkan, who was appointed by Obama. By limiting the charges to Trump, Murray and Weissman wrote, “we quickly put together an indictment to set a trial date so the American public could see the evidence and hear the jury’s conclusions.” Chutkan recognized the importance of moving quickly as the election approaches. But in his attempt to delay, Trump found an even more powerful ally than the district court judges: several justices on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Were it not for the Supreme Court, to which Trump appointed three justices, the former president would almost certainly be tried for his attempts to subvert American democracy and maintain power. Instead, the case for overturning a federal election has been turned on its head. Rather than holding Trump accountable, the U.S. Supreme Court is likely to use this case to grant Trump and his future presidents some level of immunity. Not only will this make it harder to prosecute Trump’s lawless grab for power, it will also make it harder to prosecute the wrongdoings of future presidents.
Even if the Republican-appointed majority does not declare new levels of immunity for Trump and other former presidents, as expected, their delay could keep Trump out of trial until after the election. example. Delays help Trump’s campaign. If he wins, he will never face a federal trial because he will either pardon himself or simply direct his appointees at the Justice Department to drop the charges.
Trump attempted to delay or even derail the prosecution by claiming that the former president enjoys absolute immunity for official acts committed while in office. This is a bold claim with no precedent based on the Constitution or law. Chutkan hit it. When Trump asked the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals for a retrial, Jack Smith asked the Supreme Court to immediately take up the case and bypass the appeals court. In the first move to delay the trial, the judges refused to intervene.
After the appeals court struck down Trump’s theory of immunity, Smith again turned to the justices for help, urging the court to leave the appellate ruling in place or else hear the case quickly. Instead, the judges handled the case without any sense of urgency. Chutkan’s original trial date was March 4. The justices heard the case on his final day in office. After oral arguments, the justices are expected to wait until June to issue a ruling. That would likely grant Trump some immunity, a complication that would mean the case could not proceed to trial immediately.
There is no way to know for sure which judges voted against taking the case when Smith first asked, which judges refused to uphold the D.C. Circuit decision or dragged their feet and made the case move slowly. But based on oral arguments, it seems clear that judges appointed by Trump and those appointed by other Republican presidents played a significant role.
The hearing presented evidence that Trump’s appointees are willing not only to delay Trump’s trial but also to make it much more difficult to prosecute the former president. Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch have both expressed interest in limiting the possibilities to varying degrees. Amy Coney Barrett was much more skeptical of Trump’s immunity claims, but she nonetheless expressed interest in a compromise that would create new exemptions. In the end, the Republican-appointed judges upheld Trump’s immunity claims so strongly that Trump’s lawyers refused to use the time for his rebuttal. When it was his turn to speak, he triumphantly told the court, “I have nothing more to say.”
There are many people responsible for Trump’s attempt to overturn the last presidential election and for him to face the voters again without being tried. Attorney General Merrick Garland, who stalled the DOJ’s investigation before appointing Smith, and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who took years to piece together a wide-ranging Georgia-based conspiracy case that could now be permanently derailed by her ties to one person. You can include: Prosecutor’s.
But the person most responsible for avoiding criminal prosecution is Trump himself, who has left his mark on the nation’s courts in just four years as president. Rather than a coincidence, it may be a foreshadowing of how he will escape responsibility if he becomes president again.
