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Donald Trump
Donald Trump
The first of what are likely to be many trials of criminal defendant Donald Trump have now begun, but neither he nor the Republican Party appear to realize it. Both insist Trump, as a rich and powerful politician, should be treated differently from “ordinary” criminal defendants.
Trump’s defense attorneys arrogantly demanded that special treatment with their absurd argument to postpone Trump’s federal trial for a year and a half for hiding top-secret government documents at Mar-a-Lago and refusing to give them back.
Rather than presenting any legal justification, their arguments were purely political. As a self-declared presidential candidate again, his lawyers said Trump will be much too busy to participate in his trial so it should be delayed until after the presidential election on Nov. 5, 2024.
Trump’s hard-core, MAGA Republican disciples strongly support that, but they’re a tiny minority compared to the 81 million Americans who cast the largest vote in history three years ago to rid their nation of Trump’s criminal corruption. Most of them already believe prosecutors are taking far too long to prosecute Trump for his crimes.
Demanding Job?
The simple response from special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecutors was: “Many indicted defendants have demanding jobs that require a considerable amount of their time and energy, or a significant amount of travel. The Speedy Trial Act contemplates no such factor as a basis for a continuance.”
Besides, if Trump and his lawyers think they’re busy now, they haven’t seen anything yet. Before year’s end, more criminal indictments of Trump are expected to be issued by federal and state grand juries reviewing evidence of Trump’s involvement in organizing the violent 2021 Capitol insurrection and electoral vote fraud in seven states including Wisconsin.
Trump’s attorneys falsely described Trump’s federal indictment as a corrupt political action brought by “the administration of a sitting president against his chief political rival.” That’s another Trump lie. Both President Biden and Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland have distanced themselves from Trump’s prosecution. That’s why Garland appointed Smith as a special counsel to oversee the Trump investigations.
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The irony is it’s Trump who’s vowed to create a politically corrupt Justice Department to prosecute Biden and Democrats if he’s ever re-elected president again. After Trump was indicted, he called Smith “a psycho” who looked like “a crackhead” and raved on social media: “I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family!” Trump frequently accuses his opponents of crimes he’s committed himself.
Trump’s Frivolous Arguments
Smith’s prosecutors dismissed the political arguments of Trump’s attorneys as “borderline frivolous” and irrelevant to their case legally. They specifically made that point about the boast by Trump’s lawyers they will present a “novel” and “unprecedented” argument under the Presidential Records Act that could blow the entire documents case against Trump out of the water.
We’ve heard whoppers from Trump before. This is just another one because the Presidential Records Act actually lays out the official procedure a president is required to go through to declassify top-secret government documents. Spoiler alert, it bears no resemblance to the magical process Trump described to Sean Hannity on Fox News: “There doesn’t have to be a process as I understand it. You’re the president of the United States, you can declassify … even by thinking about it.”
Trump-appointed Federal Judge Aileen Cannon who’s assigned to preside over Trump’s Florida trial—now there’s a perfect subject for conspiracy theories on social media—may not immediately follow the ridiculous suggestion to postpone Trump’s trial for a year and a half. But as presiding judge, Cannon will have plenty of opportunities to slow down the trial to a glacial pace, not to mention control the evidence introduced by the prosecution.
The ultimate political solution for Trump and the Republican Party is a two-step process. Postpone the conviction and appeals process as long as possible in the desperate hope of electing Trump or another Trumpian Republican to clean house at the Justice Department and fire all the prosecutors.
Make no mistake. Whether the FBI and U.S. Justice Department can continue to investigate and prosecute criminal activity without regard to partisanship or the political power of those who break our laws will be a central issue once again in the 2024 presidential election. We already know how that election comes out. It should simply be a repeat of 2016, only more so.
That’s because this time we also have to begin doing everything possible to restore federal protections by the U.S. Supreme Court for the equal rights of every American regardless of race, gender or sexual orientation that were savaged by Trump.
There’s a lot of talk every election about the “base” of America’s two major parties. Republicans have done nothing to expand theirs since 2016. Ours continues to grow.
