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(Trends Wide) — Few citizens face the kind of perfect storm of legal threats that engulfs Donald Trump. And since he is a past and possibly future president running for a new term, the entire country could share in his historic ordeal.
There are strong indications Tuesday that Trump could soon be indicted in a third case, this one in special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election, which deepened legal and political tension surrounding the 2024 election. Trump said Smith sent him a letter Sunday informing him he was under investigation, a step that often precedes charges. This development raised the possibility that Trump, who has pleaded not guilty in two other criminal charges, will have to punctuate his time on the campaign trail with long days in court and paying expensive legal bills.
Trump has already been charged in a Manhattan case arising from an alleged hush money payment to an adult film actress and separately for his withholding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Trump’s defense against all charges, that he is the victim of a politicized attempt to keep him out of office, threatens to further damage the critical institutions of legal accountability that underpin American society.
Trump demonstrated Tuesday that he is willing to once again shatter faith in American democracy to protect himself. “We have a man, the only way he can get elected is to arm the Department of Justice,” Trump said, referring to President Joe Biden during his visit to Iowa. “If you say anything about an election, they want to put you in jail for the rest of your life,” he added, alluding to the 2020 race that he still falsely claims was rigged against him.
Even without Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric, the political and legal systems would face an extraordinary test, as the leading candidate for the Republican nomination is being prosecuted by the Justice Department of his potential Democratic rival in November 2024.
However, an indictment over twice-indicted Trump’s unprecedented attempt to break the chain of peaceful transfers of power would be the deepest of the legal charges against him. Smith has not indicated what charges Trump could face. But glimpses of his work hint at a far-reaching investigation covering the effort to nullify elections in key swing states, alleged attempts to thwart the electoral vote-granting process, and also the former president’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of his supporters stormed Congress in an attempt to stop the certification of elections.
An indictment on such matters would effectively amount to the United States for the first time impeaching a former president with an attempt to destroy constitutional institutions and the fundamental principle that voters can choose their leader. Former Trump attorney Ty Cobb told Trends Wide’s Erin Burnett on Tuesday that any potential allegations related to election interference should be seen as a particularly historical stain. “He should be more concerned because it’s going to be a legacy-defining decision far greater than the Mar-a-Lago offenses,” Cobb said. “This is one of the great constitutional insults of our time. The country owes it to itself to reaffirm the rule of law and show that at least America’s vision is something we are willing to protect and hopefully deter (future threats to that vision) by punishing Trump if convicted.”
Retired federal judge J. Michael Luttig, a renowned conservative legal scholar, reacted to signs that Smith might impeach Trump for his attempts to invalidate the 2020 election by saying that any other attorney general or special counsel would do the same.
“The former president has left Jack Smith no choice but to press charges, lest the former president flout the United States Constitution and the rule of law,” Luttig said in a statement.
And Jeffrey Sloman, former US Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, summed up the national challenge posed by existing Trump allegations in the heat of an election this way: “These are momentous times, for the former president to be the defendant in a federal case is quite unusual… these are unprecedented times.”
The targeted letter sent to Trump was not the only sign Tuesday that more accountability is on the way over the alleged plan to overturn the 2020 election. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, announced multiple felony charges against 16 fake voters who signed certificates falsely claiming Trump won the state of Michigan in 2020.
How a new indictment could affect the presidential race
The possibility of another impeachment against Trump also raises new political questions. While his support in the primary appears to have strengthened after being impeached in previous cases, a new indictment and the potential spectacle of another trial may begin to test whether some Republican voters begin to regard Trump as too great a liability to nominate for nationally elected office.
It would also give the former president’s main Republican rivals an opportunity, should they wish to seize it, to highlight their vulnerabilities. It would be an opportunity to define his own campaigns, which are currently following in his wake, but it would also risk alienating his followers.
Several of the leading candidates showed tentative signs of trying to exploit Trump’s plight, even as their unwillingness to directly criticize him highlighted his political strength.
In an interview with Trends Wide’s Jake Tapper, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis echoed Trump’s line in warning that the country was “criminalizing political differences,” but also implied that Trump’s legal mess was becoming a distraction. “This country needs to have a debate about the future of the country. If I am the nominee, we will be able to focus on President Biden’s failures and I will be able to articulate a positive vision for the future,” DeSantis said. “I don’t think it will do us any good to have a presidential election focused on what happened four years ago in January.”
Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley made a similar comment, but with more force. “The rest of this primary election is going to be about Trump, it’s going to be about lawsuits, it’s going to be about legal fees, it’s going to be about judges,” Haley told Fox News. “It will just continue to be a bigger and bigger distraction.”
But Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who once said Trump bore responsibility for the Jan. 6 insurrection but long since tied his race to the former president, offered what is likely a more authentic view of the sentiments of many Republican voters regarding a possible new impeachment. of Trump.
“If you look recently, President Trump went up in the polls and was actually beating President Biden for re-election. So what do they do now? Arm the government to go after their number one opponent,” McCarthy said.
Many more of Trump’s closest allies on Capitol Hill, despite not knowing what charges he might face in this case, characteristically jumped to his defense on Tuesday, accusing the Biden administration of using justice as a weapon against him.
But if Trump becomes the Republican nominee while fighting to clear his name in any of these cases, voters would also be presented with the extraordinary dilemma of whether to put someone who might be a convicted felon in the Oval Office and trust him with the nation’s most vital secrets, national security and democracy.
A third indictment would also further merge Trump’s legal and political campaign. Although he proclaims that he is running to save America, part of his motivation appears to be to save himself, as if he wins the presidency again, he would have the ability to potentially drop some of the pending cases against him. His strategy of portraying all investigations into his conduct as politically motivated has the impact of blurring the evidence against him and distracting attention from his often aberrational behavior in office and afterwards. But he also risks further damaging the legal system in the eyes of millions of Americans who support him.
And even if he is defeated in his bid for a third straight GOP nomination, Trump’s message ensures that a third straight election will be marred by legal complications, following the controversy over the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server in 2016 and Trump’s attempt to stay in power after losing the 2020 race.
a legal jam
One of the thorniest questions raised by the possibility of another impeachment would be how to schedule multiple trials in a way that meets the need to give Trump a fair trial but allows the wheels of justice to turn at a reasonable speed. Trump is due to go to trial in March in the Manhattan case. More trials will demand even more of his time during a period when he could be expected to tour the nation for rallies and possibly participate in debates and, if he is the nominee, at the Republican National Convention.
The situation could get even more complicated, as Trump is still waiting to hear whether a district attorney in Georgia will charge him in an investigation into his alleged attempt to steal Biden’s election victory in the battleground state. On its own, the Georgia case would be a staggering stain on a presidency. But such is the legal quagmire facing Trump that it has become something of an afterthought at this point.
Potential courtroom gridlock hung over the first hearing Tuesday before Florida District Court Judge Aileen Cannon, who will preside over Trump’s trial for alleged mishandling of national defense information and possible obstruction. Cannon, a Trump appointee, said she thought the December request for Smith’s trial was too soon.
But there were no signs that he was sympathetic to the request by Trump’s legal team to postpone the trial until after the 2024 election. His team had argued that the former president would be too busy campaigning to participate. Trump’s lawyers also introduced a political angle to the case, claiming that the public would view the trial as the frontrunner of the Republican Party and his potential Democratic election foe, Biden, facing off in the courtroom. Prosecutor David Harbach, however, rejected any charges of politicization, saying charges had been brought by a grand jury and deserved a trial.
If the events of this Tuesday are any guide, Trump could soon face the possibility of another trial.
