Here’s the thing about Donald Trump’s advancing criminal trials
When multiple things are happening at once on multiple tracks, it can be tricky to find a definitive pattern or trend playing out across all of it. Sometimes there is no trend, and things are simply all over the place. But if one clear trend has emerged this past week, it’s Donald Trump trying and failing to delay justice. The word “failing” is the key here.
This week Trump tried to get a stay in his New York civil fraud verdict. Not only did he fail to get it, he also failed to delay the process of the verdict being carried out by even a single day. If Trump wants to appeal this verdict, he’ll have to cough up a bond as large as the verdict itself. So either way Trump is about to lose roughly half a billion dollars.
Trump also recently lost his last ditch attempt at keeping his New York criminal trial (brought by Alvin Bragg) from happening on time. That trial is now set to begin in March, just about a month from now. At this point the only thing that could delay this trial is if Trump’s federal criminal trial (Jack Smith) ends up coming first.
To that end, we’re still waiting for the U.S. Supreme Court to announce whether it’s taking up Trump’s “presidential immunity” appeal. If so, then there may be a slight delay in the start of Trump’s federal criminal trial. But if the Supreme Court keeps up its pattern of not wanting anything to do with Trump’s criminal troubles, and announces that it’s not taking up the case, then Trump’s federal criminal trial will be set for takeoff.
So we have Donald Trump failing to delay his inevitable financial apocalypse, failing to delay his state criminal trial, and probably failing to delay his federal criminal trial. It’s a good reminder that he never did have a magic “delay” wand. In fact the more deeply you get into the legal process, the harder it becomes to delay things. Trump’s last minute “delay tactics” will be less likely to delay anything than ever.
