It looks increasingly likely that former President Donald Trump's only criminal trial prior to Election Day will be the one currently underway in Manhattan. Various experts attribute Trump's dodging of criminal accountability to his deft use of legal delay tactics.
This week, Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon indefinitely postponed the ex-president's classified documents trial, citing a backlog of pre-trial motions she has yet to rule on as the reason to scuttle the previously scheduled May 20 trial date. Trump's election interference trial in Fulton County, Georgia was also sidelined this week after the Georgia Court of Appeals granted the defense's appeal of Judge Scott McAfee's decision to allow Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to remain on the case. The soonest that case could go to trial now would be in mid-2025.
Veteran Republican pollster Whit Ayres told Bloomberg that Trump has benefited from a perfect storm of circumstances. His legal strategy of delays, appeals and other tactics has allowed him to avoid having to see the inside of a courtroom in three of his four trials for likely the remainder of 2024.
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“Trump is a master at denial and delay,” Ayres said. “He’s got a lot of experience with it, but he also has a Justice Department that waited a long time to get serious about prosecuting [the Mar-a-Lago case]."
The former president's indictment in the Southern District of Florida is seen as the most damning for the presumptive 2024 GOP presidential nominee. Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith has compiled a wealth of evidence since the FBI's 2022 raid on Mar-a-Lago, in which boxes of classified government documents are seen in official photos strewn about the ex-president's home in a haphazard fashion. Ayres called that case "strong as battery acid."
"If any of us had done what Trump had done with the documents, not only would we be indicted now, we would be in jail," Ayres said.
Former federal prosecutor Mary McCord agreed, telling Bloomberg that the ex-president benefited from the luck of the draw when the 11th Circuit randomly assigned a conservative judge he appointed in the final year of his presidency to the case. She said a different judge may not have been as "accommodating to Trump" and likely would have kept the pre-trial process moving at a steady clip.
READ MORE: Former Trump lawyer slams Judge Cannon for indefinitely postponing docs trial
"It’s been a combination of the legal strategy, which is delay, and then certain courts and certain actions by some of the courts that have allowed that strategy to be successful," McCord said.
Aside from his Georgia case and his Mar-a-Lago case, Trump has also succeeded in pushing off his DC election interference trial to a much later date as well — potentially also beyond Election Day. The Supreme Court agreed to hear his appeal of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals' decision to not grant him absolute immunity from criminal prosecution, and may not issue a ruling until its term ends in June. And because U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan has said that both sides would get up to three months of preparation before going to trial, that could mean Trump won't receive a verdict in the January 6 case until after the general election.
Currently, Trump's Manhattan trial is still underway, and is expected to conclude in June. Trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records relating to hush money payments he allegedly orchestrated to women who claimed to have had extramarital affairs with him prior to the 2016 election. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg maintains that those payments were in the furtherance of Trump's political ambitions, making them illegal campaign contributions.
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