The issues and events of 2024 that will help determine Donald Trump’s fate

by — January 4, 2024 in Politics
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Welcome to our first Trump-proof newsletter of 2024, a year that will almost certainly test American democracy.

If the polls prove correct, Donald Trump is on track to secure his party’s presidential nomination in 2024. And his campaign will unfold while the courts are filled with accusations of his misconduct.

Trump will juggle hearings (and potentially a trial or two) in his four criminal cases. He could lose control of his business in a civil fraud case. And he will find out whether states can brand him insurrectional and remove him from their ballot boxes, legal moves that will likely end up before the Supreme Court.

This accumulation of problems would cause total chaos in a normal year, but 2024 will be anything but normal. Trump’s legal problems are about to collide head-on with his packed campaign schedule, and the first collision will come this month when, as he told Maggie, he wants to testify in a case in New York that begins just one day after the Iowa caucuses to determine how much he will have to pay a woman who has already been found guilty of defamation.

To help prepare for a year like no other, we’ve mapped out some historical themes and events that will help determine Trump’s fate.

This week, Trump’s lawyers asked the Supreme Court to resolve a dispute over whether he can be removed from state elections under the Constitution.

The measure in question, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, was implemented after the Civil War to prevent Southern rebels from occupying important federal positions. So far, two states, Maine and Colorado, have found that Trump can be considered an insurrectionist for inciting the January 6 attack on the Capitol. But other states disagree, and Trump is filing a legal challenge to Maine’s decision and appealing Colorado’s decision to the Supreme Court.

If the Supreme Court takes up the case, as it is expected to, its consideration of the issues could begin as early as this month, during the early stages of Republican primary voting, which begins in Iowa a week after Monday and continues through New Hampshire the following week.

Trump’s team, in an attempt to overturn the Colorado ruling, has argued that millions of voters could be disenfranchised if states are allowed to keep it out of the polls, that the storming of the Capitol was not an insurrection, and that even if it was, it did not incite him.

The Supreme Court could also become entangled in determining whether Trump is immune from prosecution on federal charges of conspiring to overturn his 2020 election loss.

The immunity fight is the most important part of the election interference case, involving both untested questions of law and consequential questions of opportunity. The case is currently scheduled to go to trial in Washington in March, the day before Super Tuesday, but remains on hold until Trump’s attempts to dismiss the charges on immunity grounds are resolved.

Those efforts are now before a federal appeals court in Washington, which has agreed to consider the issue on an accelerated schedule. A three-judge panel will hear arguments Tuesday and Trump plans to attend, although he could decide not to.

The immunity appeal is legally important because it focuses on a question that has never before been asked or fully answered: Can a former president be held criminally responsible for things he did while in office? This is all new because Trump is the first former president to be charged with crimes.

But the battle over immunity, even if Trump loses on the merits of his arguments, could still determine whether the trial will take place before the November election.

The Supreme Court could have a huge impact on this issue.

If the court moves quickly to hear the case, the federal election charges could be heard by a jury in late spring or summer. But if the court moves slowly, there may not be time for a trial to take place before the election is decided, depriving voters of the opportunity to hear the evidence gathered by prosecutors and giving Trump the opportunity, in If elected, do so. for the Department of Justice to drop the charges.

If the federal election interference trial is postponed until the summer or beyond, there are signs that another trial could take its place: one based in New York on charges that Trump participated in hush payments to a porn star in the run-up to the 2016 election. If the trial in New York were to go ahead, it could take place during the late stages of the primary season or as Trump – assuming his campaign does not falter – prepares to formally accept the Republican nomination in the party convention in July in Milwaukee.

That case, brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, will be familiar to many for its colorful cast of characters. There’s Stormy Daniels, the porn star who claims Trump had an affair with her and tried to buy her silence when he first ran for office. Then there’s Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, who is about to tell the jury that he made the payments on Trump’s behalf. Prosecutors claim the company’s business records were manipulated to cover Trump’s tracks.

We won’t know much about how Trump’s other federal case will play out until at least March 1. That’s when Judge Aileen Cannon scheduled a hearing in Florida to consider a new trial date.

The Florida case centers on charges that Trump illegally withheld dozens of highly classified national security documents after leaving office and then conspired with two of his aides to obstruct the government’s efforts to recover them.

Late last year, Judge Cannon expressed concern that her trial could “clash” with the election trial in Washington and made some adjustments to her schedule, mostly related to filings involving classified materials at the center of the case.

While his schedule changes have made it virtually impossible for the trial to begin on its current start date of May 20, we will have to wait until the hearing in March to see how long the proceedings will be delayed. If the trial were postponed until after Election Day, and if Trump were to win, the documents case, like the federal election case, may never come before a jury, or at least could be postponed until after for him to leave office, given the judge’s decision. The Department’s long-standing policy of not prosecuting sitting presidents.

Trump’s trial in Georgia, accused of tampering with that state’s election by a local prosecutor, is the only one of his four criminal cases that does not yet have a formal start date. Prosecutors with the Fulton County district attorney’s office have said they want the trial to begin in August. But it remains to be seen if the judge will accept that deadline and if the trial will be held before the race ends. Trump’s lawyers have vehemently objected.

Trump’s lawyers will have to file their pretrial motions challenging the accusation on Monday. Expect to see court documents claiming that Trump is immune from charges in Georgia in a way that echoes immunity arguments in Washington.

Two other issues will be on Trump’s agenda this month, even as Republican primary voters begin the process of selecting their candidate. The New York attorney general’s civil fraud case against Trump and his company is scheduled to conclude with a judge’s decision on the penalties he must pay. The former president said this week that he intends to be in the courtroom.

Separately, Trump faces a trial for damages for defaming E. Jean Carroll, a New York writer who said he raped her in a New York department store in the 1990s. Last year, a jury found he had sexually abused her. sexually from her. Trump has said that he also intends to be present at that trial, which begins in New York a week from Tuesday.

We asked readers what they’d like to know about the Trump cases: the charges, the procedure, the major players, or anything else. You can send us your question by filling out this form.

Which former presidents have gone through the litigious challenges that Donald Trump encountered? —Frank Snitz, Berkeley, California

Alan: No previous president has faced anything even close to the range of legal problems facing Trump. Trump is the first former president to be charged with a crime and the first to have his name removed from the ballot under a constitutional provision prohibiting insurrection. He is also the first former president to face a trial (or rather, trials) while running for office again.

Trump is at the center of at least four separate criminal investigations, both at the state and federal level, into matters related to his business and political career. This is where each case currently stands.

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