How many of Donald Trump’s criminal trials are going to happen before the election? The number may surprise you.
When it comes to each of Donald Trump’s remaining criminal trials, we keep seeing the same pattern play out. Each time the courts make a procedural move, most of the media and pundit class begins hyperbolically screaming that it means the trial will never happen before the election. This ratings-driven hyperbole from the outrage factory makes it difficult to figure out what’s really going on. But after a bit of time the serious legal experts manage to parse what the latest legal move really means – not that most people are still listening by that point.
For instance, early this week the appeals court in Georgia announced that it would hear Trump’s appeal of the lower court ruling that Fani Willis can remain on the case. This set off immediate and widespread shouting about how the trial will never happen and we’re doomed. But then legal expert Glenn Kirschner dug in and determined that the Fulton County trial still very much has a chance to happen before the election, because the trial judge has already ruled that he’ll keep the pretrial proceedings moving forward while the appeals court issue is decided.
Then there is Donald Trump’s federal criminal trial in Florida, which is the most fraught of the bunch due to Judge Aileen Cannon. But even as the media raced this week to declare that Cannon had somehow delayed the trial forever and that it’ll never happen, the reality is that it’s simply Jack Smith’s move to make now. If he thinks he finally has enough to get the 11th Circuit to remove her, he’ll do it. The idea that Cannon can just sit there forever doing nothing, and that nothing will happen in response, is sort of laughable.
Finally, there is Donald Trump’s federal criminal trial in Washington DC. That’s the one that’s being overseen by a solid judge in Tanya Chutkan, but is currently being held up by the U.S. Supreme Court. Of course the media and pundit class, and everyone else mugging for the cable news cameras, has already rushed to declare that this trial will never happen before the election, because the Supreme Court will just magic wand it into not happening.
But this doesn’t fit with the facts at hand. If anything the Supreme Court keeps showing that it’s willing to give Trump a little bit of help, but isn’t willing to stick its neck out particularly far for him. So the most logical expectation is that the Supreme Court will hand down a ruling perhaps next month, and then the trial will proceed from there.
Will this leave enough time for Trump’s Washington DC criminal trial to happen? As it turns out, the answer is most likely yes. Legal experts Matthew Seligman, Ryan Goodman and Norm Eisen have jointly published an article which spells out three different paths this could end up taking. The bottom line: while some of the scenarios are more favorable than others, all three leave the door wide open for Trump’s trial to take place before the election.
So in reality there’s a good chance that Trump’s Washington DC criminal trial, and his Fulton County criminal trial, could both still happen before the election. Even if the Cannon saga continues to drag out unreasonably, this would still mean that three of Trump’s criminal trials (including the one already going on in New York) will have taken place before the election.
Keep in mind that most of the media and pundit class tried to convince us that none of Trump’s criminal trials would happen before the election. That was never realistic. Statistically speaking, with Trump facing four criminal trials, three of them with solid judges attached, it was already realistic to expect that two to three of them would occur before the election. In spite of all the recent doomsday hysteria, it appears we’re still on track for two or three of them to indeed happen before the election.
