Tension over the possible start of criminal proceedings against the ex-president continues, but the most serious trials are likely to be a long time coming.
In the United States, a poor guy selling a few ounces of marijuana can be arrested, charged, tried, and convicted in a matter of hours.
For a billionaire politician who commits crimes serially and in broad daylight, it’s not quite the same. Will we end up seeing Donald Trump in the dock?
Bad start
The prosecutor’s caution is understandable. Criminal charges against a former president – and incumbent presidential candidate at that – would set a serious precedent.
Cases at stake include a bribe paid to a porn actress, an attempted voter fraud in Georgia, stolen documents illegally stored in Mar-a-Lago, and inciting the January 6, 2021 riot.
The case that will likely result in the first indictment seems to do Trump the least harm. Though Trump’s ex-lawyer went to jail for helping pay Stormy Daniels, a state-initiated lawsuit could be bogged down.
First, it’s a federal crime that federal prosecutors prefer to ignore; that’s a bad sign. It is then a relatively small crime whose political impact promises to be limited. After all, even the most fervent evangelists have remained loyal to Trump, despite his adulterous affair with a porn starlet.
Bury the lawsuits
The other case where indictment appears imminent is that of Georgia. We’ve all heard Trump threaten the Secretary of State to “find” 11,780 votes. The law is clear and the facts are irrefutable, but the matter may lie flat.
While Trump’s lawyers are doing everything they can to delay the process, the (Republican) legislature has introduced a bill that would allow him to arbitrarily fire a prosecutor deemed “ineffective”. Nobody is deceived. The main purpose of this law is to fire the Democratic prosecutor in charge of the Trump trial.
Anyone else would have been tried and convicted by now, but justice works differently when the accused is the leader of a cult whose members control the process.
The strike of the clock
The other cases have even broader reach and the evidence is just as compelling, but the complexity of the process allows Trump’s attorneys to drag out the proceedings like a football team ticking the clock at the end of a game.
The document case got a little more complicated and less politically damaging when Biden and Pence were also found guilty. As for the Jan. 6 case, in which hundreds of people have already been charged for following Trump’s orders, the evidence is so complex that the chances of the trial being completed before November 2024 are slim.
Meanwhile, Republicans and their media allies are fading out the Jan. 6 episode to the point where Trump has a good chance of winning the Republican nomination in 2024.
Donald Trump said in 2016 he could commit a crime in broad daylight on Fifth Avenue and his supporters would continue to support him. On one of those rare occasions, he may have been telling the truth.
