No matter what Judge Aileen Cannon says or does in court today, it won’t magically save Donald Trump from Jack Smith
Just yesterday we were reminded that if prosecutors have taken the time to set up the chess board sufficiently well, there’s no move a guilty defendant can make that will help him. Donald Trump asked the Georgia Supreme Court to bail him out of the criminal charges he’s about to face in Fulton County, and the court immediately turned around and laughed at him. Unanimously. This was because Fani Willis set the board such that there was no way the Georgia Supreme Court could have helped Trump even if it had wanted to.
This brings us to today, where Trump is dealing with a different court system and a different set of criminal charges. Trump’s legal team will be in federal court today, arguing that Trump’s criminal trial in his Espionage Act scandal should be delayed until after the 2024 election.
Because of how well Jack Smith has set this all up, it’s unlikely that even Judge Aileen Cannon will be willing to stick her neck out far enough to try to help Trump by baselessly ruling that his trial should be postponed for a year and a half. But if she’s willing to destroy what’s left of her career, it’s possible she’ll rule that way. The thing is, it won’t much matter if she does.
If Cannon rules that Trump’s trial should be put on ice for a year and a half, one of two things will happen. Either Jack Smith will go to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and get Cannon overruled (and possibly removed from the case), or Smith will simply file other Espionage Act charges against Trump in some other federal jurisdictions.
Either way, Donald Trump will absolutely 100% end up on trial in federal court for Espionage Act charges, well before the 2024 election. That’s because Jack Smith has already set up the chess board such that there’s no other outcome. Cannon is very limited in what she can do to help Trump, and even if she tries, she can’t do anything about charges that Smith might decide to file against Trump in Washington DC or New Jersey.
And as we keep seeing in various jurisdictions, there’s nothing that Donald Trump can do to help himself. When your big appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court gets laughed at and doesn’t even delay things by a single day, you’re out of ideas. If Trump had any actual moves to try, he’d be trying them. Instead he’s reduced to desperate fantasyland stuff. We don’t know what will happen in federal court today. But we do know that no matter what Aileen Cannon says or does, none of it will magically save Trump from Jack Smith. Trump is nothing but a sitting duck, waiting for the legal system to haul him away to prison.
