Candidates need to be in public pressing the flesh and making the case for their candidacies.
However, former President Donald Trump’s legal woes could take him off the campaign trail for weeks at a time.
Donald Trump Is In Trouble
Ordinarily, trials require defendants to be in the courtroom during court proceedings. This will be the first time in history that a presidential candidate will be forced to appear in court to defend himself against criminal allegations against the backdrop of a campaign.
By trying Trump during the presidential campaign, the Justice Department will face the perception of its politicization of the judicial system to a degree never experienced in modern history.
Trump Faces Multiple Civil Suits During Primary Season
Trump already lost a civil judgment against E. Jean Carroll in May in a defamation trial, and was ordered to pay her $5 million in damages.
The trial alleged sexual abuse stemming from his public denials of her rape accusations.
He faces a second trial in Carroll’s initial lawsuit arising from his 2019 denial that he knew her and his insinuation that she libeled him in her 2019 book “What Do We Need Men For?” by claiming he raped her in the dressing room at Manhattan’s Bergdorf Goodman department store.
That case opens on January 15, the same day as the Iowa Caucuses. Then on January 29, Trump goes on trial in a civil lawsuit brought by anonymous plaintiffs accusing the Trump Organization of business fraud connected with the Donald J. Trump Foundation; ACN, a telecommunications marketing company that paid Trump millions; and the Trump Institute that claimed to offer students access to Trump’s real estate knowledge.
“This case connects the dots at the Trump Organization and involves systematic fraud that spanned more than a decade, involved multiple Trump businesses, and caused tremendous harm to thousands of hardworking Americans,” the plaintiffs’ attorneys Roberta Kaplan and Andrew G. Celli Jr. said in a 2018 statement to The New York Times.
The suit is funded by the Washington, D.C.-based Tesseract Research Center, formerly the Agenda Project. Tax records show the group has received funding from the Mark Zuckerberg-backed Silicon Valley Community Foundation (SCVF). The Tesseract Research Center under its prior name endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders and called for a “political revolution” in America. Its co-founder and President, Erica Payne, was a co-founder of the Soros-backed Democracy Alliance, which has been a key funding organ in the anti-Trump resistance.
Trump will be able to avoid personal appearances at these civil trials. He will not have that luxury when it comes to the criminal actions he faces.
Trump to Stand Trial in Stormy Daniels Case at Height of Primary Season
New York state Judge Juan Merchan has ordered Trump to stand trial in the Stormy Daniels business fraud case on March 25, 2024 just weeks after the Super Tuesday primaries. Trump called the date “election interference” on TruthSocial.
Judge Aileen Cannon has yet to rule on Trump’s motion to push the trial in his classified documents case until after the 2024 election. Special Counsel Jack Smith has indicated to Trump that he will be indicted for crimes related to January 6.
He also could be indicted next month for his alleged effort to intimidate Georgia election officials into helping him win that state’s electoral votes in 2020.
How this will impact Trump in 2024 remains to be seen. It’s a historic situation that remains uncharted.
John Rossomando is a defense and counterterrorism analyst and served as Senior Analyst for Counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years. His work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, The National Interest, National Review Online, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com, and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia, and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award for his reporting.
From 19FortyFive
The Second American Civil War Has Begun
