Trump lawfare update

The anti-Trump coalition has launched six main attacks on Trump. Attack No. 1 is the federal indictment, brought by the Justice Department-appointed special counsel Jack Smith, charging Trump with 40 felony counts in the classified documents case. No. 2 is the federal indictment, also brought by Smith, charging Trump with four felonies in the 2020 election and Jan. 6 case. No. 3 is the sprawling, 13-felony count racketeering indictment, based on the 2020 election, brought against Trump and 18 co-defendants in Georgia by the elected Democratic Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. No. 4 is the 34-felony count indictment, based on the payment of hush money in the 2016 election, brought by the elected Democratic Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. No. 5 is the effort, launched by various activists around the country, to remove Trump from presidential ballots by declaring him an “insurrectionist” under the terms of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. And No. 6 is the effort to bankrupt Trump by way of a lawsuit brought by the elected Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James. 

Now, with their efforts in the news daily, it might be a good time to see where things stand. Go through them in reverse order of importance — that is, starting with the cases least likely to hurt Trump this year:

• The 14th Amendment removal campaign. It’s over. Having all nine Supreme Court justices agree that no state can take Trump off the ballot is as decisive as it gets. It is hard to overstate the hopes raised in ResistanceWorld by the possibility that Trump might be instantly removed from ballots through a process some legal scholars called “self-executing” — that is, one that did not require Congress or any legislature or any court to take any action. Now, all those bright hopes are dead, dead, dead. Still — and keep an eye on this — you might see the 14th Amendment argument revived if Trump wins and congressional Democrats look for a way to prevent him from taking office.

• The Georgia case. What can be said about it? Right now, everyone is waiting for a judge to decide whether to remove Willis from the case on the basis of charges of misconduct raised by a number of defense lawyers. If Willis is removed, the entire case might collapse for want of another prosecutor to pursue it. In any event, it has been hopelessly delayed, and even before the recent mess, Willis predicted it would take until early 2025 to decide. To call the case troubled would be a great understatement.

• The federal classified documents case. It was always going to be hard to do this year, given that it involves millions of documents, security clearances, and special handling of evidence. The judge in the case has entertained suggestions of starting the trial in midsummer, but that seems extremely unlikely, and a verdict before Election Day seems even more unlikely. 

• The New York lawsuit. Unlike the others, this has been a ringing success for the people seeking Trump’s financial ruin. Trying flimsy and blatantly unfair charges before a compliant judge — under New York law, Trump did not have the right to a jury trial — James won a $454 million judgment against the former president. Trump is now scrambling to find a way to reduce the amount he has to pay this month, an effort that might involve him partially dismantling his business empire to pay James while he seeks an appeal. Even if he manages to reduce the award on appeal, Trump has still been damaged. And James, the attorney general, is having a ball taunting him on social media, reminding him that the amount he owes is going up by more than $100,000 each day due to interest.

• The federal 2020 election and Jan. 6 case. This is the showpiece case, the one so many anti-Trump forces have pinned their hopes on because they see it as the prime vehicle to hold Trump “accountable,” one of their favorite words, for his efforts to challenge the 2020 election results. The trial was originally scheduled to begin this week — ResistanceWorld would have been in heaven — but has been delayed by Trump’s claim that he should be immune from charges over acts he took as president. Prosecutor Jack Smith is scrambling to keep the case on track, but the Supreme Court will rule not only on the immunity question, which Trump is expected to lose, but also on two of the four charges against Trump, which some argue simply do not apply to the case. Plus, the whole thing flatly violates Justice Department guidelines that bar a prosecutor from “select[ing] the timing of any action … for the purpose of affecting any election,” which Smith is clearly trying to do. Look for Smith to keep encountering problems.

• The Manhattan case. Bragg was the first to file criminal charges against Trump. It’s safe to say he got little respect for it. Even Trump’s adversaries admitted that the Bragg charges were weak. It’s really a bunch of misdemeanors that Bragg conjured into felonies through a legally questionable maneuver. The other cases, bad as some of them are, got more respect and attention, and Bragg stepped into the background, offering to delay trying his case while the others went first. But now all those cases have encountered problems, and Bragg is steaming ahead to a March 25 trial date, less than three weeks away. It’s a bad case, but it’s a case. If you’re trying to bring down Trump by any means necessary and all the other cases have faltered, well, go with Bragg. As weak as the case is, he still seems favored to win at least some convictions with a New York jury.

The reason for the Democratic panic is this: Some in the party think, sure, President Joe Biden is weak and his polls are terrible, but if he falters, there is always lawfare. We’ve thrown case after case against Trump. Surely one of them will work. Now, there has been a lot of movement with the big six cases. Five of them might not be resolved, or resolved in Biden’s favor, before the election. So it could be that the entire hopes of the Democratic Party and all those who seek to bring down Trump before Election Day rest with Bragg.

For a deeper dive into many of the topics covered in the Daily Memo, please listen to my podcast, The Byron York Show — available on Radio America and the Ricochet Audio Network and everywhere else podcasts can be found.