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On the docket: the courts are suddenly making Trump ‘jubilant’
On Monday, Donald Trump did something he has rarely done in the past few months: he heaped praise on judges.
“I want to start by thanking the supreme court for its unanimous decision today,” he said in remarks at his Mar-a-Lago home, shortly after the US supreme court ruled that he was wrongly removed from Colorado’s primary ballot, in a decision that guarantees he’ll be able to appear on every state’s ballots this fall.
“It was a very important decision, very well crafted. I think it will go a long way toward bringing our country together, which our country needs.”
In the past week, judges have given Trump a lot to smile about.
The supreme court’s ruling that he can’t be removed from the ballot came just days after the same court decided to in effect delay his Washington DC federal election interference trial for months, possibly pushing it past election day and derailing the trial entirely. On Wednesday, the court announced that it would hear arguments for that case on 25 April – the absolute final day of the court’s calendar for oral arguments.
Guardian US reporter Hugo Lowell writes that Trump “has been jubilant” over the supreme court’s move, and has repeatedly raised the topic “every day since” it happened, according to people close to him.
On Friday, Trump smirked and smiled as he watched Judge Aileen Cannon, a judge in Florida he appointed to the federal bench who’s now overseeing his classified documents case, make clear she was in no rush to get that trial moving and was likely to delay its start date.
Cannon told prosecutors that one part of their proposed schedule was “unrealistic”, a sign she wouldn’t accept their proposed July trial date. And she declined to actually schedule anything during last Friday’s scheduling hearing – an unusual approach that charitably indicates the rookie judge is moving very deliberately through the process, and could even suggest she’s aiming to slow the trial down as much as possible.
Trump is known for wearing his emotions on his sleeve, and his demeanor couldn’t have been more different than at other recent court appearances. When he appeared at the late January hearing to set his New York hush-money trial dates, Trump called it a “sad day for New York” and complained the trial would take him off the campaign trail. During his civil defamation trial with E Jean Carroll in late January, Trump groused so loudly during testimony that the judge had to warn him to pipe down – or be removed from court.
In Georgia, we’re still waiting to see what Judge Scott McAfee decides to do after last Friday’s hearing wrapped up debate over whether the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, and special prosecutor Nathan Wade should be removed from Trump’s Georgia criminal election interference case. Trump’s criminal hush-money case is set to kick off in New York in just a few weeks.
But the events of the past 10 days have made it more likely that all but one of Trump’s criminal trials may not take place before the November election – if they happen at all.
Will this matter?
Guardian US chief reporter Ed Pilkington dissects the supreme court’s decision to leave Trump on the ballot in Colorado, warning that its 9-0 decision belied a deep division over what the liberal justices viewed as a “wholly gratuitous” expansive decision from five of the court’s conservative justices.
Ed writes: “The sting of the ruling – and its danger, despite its unanimous facade – is likely to be felt in the longer term. As the three liberal justices lament, the ruling shields the court and ‘petitioner’ – ie Trump – ‘from future controversy’. Worse, the conservative majority has moved to ‘insulate all alleged insurrectionists from future challenges to their holding federal office’ … protecting all future insurrectionists against the democratic safeguards built into the US constitution.
“That future may not be long in coming. Trump has shown no remorse over 2020, and may well unleash another attack should he lose in November.”
Our reporter George Chidi explains that Judge McAfee’s crucial decision on whether or not to disqualify Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade from the Georgia election interference case probably hinges on how McAfee views a specific part of the law: whether the defense had to prove Willis and Wade had an actual conflict of interest, or just the appearance of impropriety, for them to be booted from the case.
“The stakes are high,” George writes. “If Willis is disqualified, it will plunge the prosecution against Trump, and others, into chaos, likely triggering delays that could go beyond the November election. If Willis remains, the prosecution of the former US president for seeking to undermine Georgia’s 2020 election will continue – though it will be badly damaged in terms of political optics.”
And Sam Levine lays out how the supreme court’s decision to hear Trump’s claims of presidential immunity was “unquestionably one of Trump’s biggest legal victories to date” – and undercuts their own standing in the eyes of the public.
“The court has now essentially sanctioned Trump’s delaying strategy,” Sam writes. “Regardless of what the supreme court rules on the immunity question, by delaying the trial, it has now directly linked itself to Trump’s fate in the 2024 election. It is a perilous move for a court that is already suffering a credibility crisis and is widely seen as a body that favors Republicans and conservatives.”
Briefs
• Trump’s attorneys said they opposed a gag order that Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s office has asked Judge Juan Merchan to put in place in Trump’s upcoming hush-money criminal trial. The limited gag order would bar Trump from attacking potential trial witnesses, jurors, and Bragg and Merchan’s staffs while excluding the prosecutor and the judge themselves from the order.
• The Georgia state senate committee that is investigating Willis held a Wednesday hearing with Ashleigh Merchant, the attorney for Trump Georgia co-defendant Mike Roman, where she reiterated the claims she’d made during her push to disqualify Willis from the case.
• Politico reports that in recent weeks Arizona prosecutors issued grand-jury subpoenas to multiple people linked to Trump’s 2020 campaign, a sign that Kris Mayes, Arizona’s Democratic attorney general, is nearing a decision on whether to charge Trump’s allies in the state with crimes relating to their attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss.
Cronies & casualties
Pro-Trump attorneys Kenneth Chesebro and Jim Troupis settled a civil lawsuit in Wisconsin on Monday by agreeing to turn over documents that revealed the key role they played in creating what became Trump’s “fake electors” scheme to try to overturn his 2020 election defeat.
Those once-private text messages and emails show exactly how intimately Chesebro was involved in the efforts – from conceptualizing the plan itself to brainstorming media strategy to attending the 6 January rally, where he took a selfie near the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
In one text message, after the Wisconsin supreme court declined to overturn the state’s election results, Chesebro sent Troupis a screenshot of a text that appears to joke about killing Brian Hagedorn, a conservative justice who cast a critical vote in the case. “We’re thinking of inviting Hagedorn on the plane and solving that problem at high altitude, over water …” the message says.
What’s next
Friday Georgia’s campaign-filing deadline is noon on Friday – meaning we’ll know by then whether anyone decides to run against Fani Willis (as well as Judge Scott McAfee, who’s overseeing the case and is running for election for the first time after being appointed to the bench by the Republican governor, Brian Kemp, in 2022).
Some time next week McAfee said at last Friday’s hearing that he plans to make a decision by the end of next week on whether Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade will be allowed to remain on the Georgia case.
Any time now Judge Cannon could announce the new trial schedule for the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case.
25 March Trump’s criminal hush-money trial is set to begin with jury selection in New York.
25 April The US supreme court will hear oral arguments over Trump’s claims that presidential immunity protects him against any criminal charges for his actions in the lead-up to the January 6 insurrection.
Have any questions about Trump’s trials? Please send them our way at: trumpontrial@theguardian.com
