Posted on 02/03/2024 11:19:55 AM PST by Signalman
Democrats perturbed about Donald Trump’s lead in 2024 polling have long had a comforting hope to fall back on: that Trump, who is facing four criminal prosecutions, will likely become a convicted felon before Election Day — or even be sent to prison.
That’s still possible — but it’s not as sure a bet as it once seemed.
Delays have piled up in federal court proceedings in the District of Columbia case about Trump’s attempt to steal the 2020 election and the Florida classified documents case against Trump, making it unclear whether either case will go to trial before November. (For the DC case, the hold-up is higher-court appeals; for Florida, it’s a slow-walking judge.)
Meanwhile, the Georgia election case has recently been consumed by scandalous allegations about Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, which throw the future of that prosecution into question. A judge will soon consider whether Willis and her office should be disqualified. He could decide not to do that, but even then, a trial date has not yet been set in the complex case.
That leaves the New York hush money case as the only trial that still seems on track. It’s currently scheduled to begin on March 25 — but first, on February 15, a judge will consider whether the felony charges against Trump there are legal.
The upshot is that Trump’s only trial this year could end up being the New York one — the least substantively significant of the four. The charges are about whether Trump improperly logged Trump Organization payments to his then-attorney Michael Cohen as legal expenses, when they were reimbursements for hush money Cohen paid Stormy Daniels. It’s shady behavior, but it’s not exactly at the level of stealing an election or jeopardizing national security secrets.
Yet there’s little that can be done to expedite things at this point. Prosecutors filed their cases last year, but now they’re in judges’ hands — and judges are not beholden to the election calendar.
It’s not certain that even multiple Trump convictions would be the game-changer in the polls Democrats hoped for. But getting a verdict before November 5 is the only way we’d ever find out. (As to whether Trump might be sentenced to prison, we can’t know that until an actual trial takes place.)
So Election Day could come and go with most of Trump’s legal jeopardy unresolved — and, if he wins, some of those delays could become permanent, since he’d almost surely shut down the federal investigations targeting him.
Fani Willis is facing allegations in Georgia
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis arrives to speak at a news conference at the Fulton County Government building on August 14, 2023, in Atlanta, Georgia. Joe Raedle/Getty Images Until recently, the sweeping racketeering case against Trump and 18 co-defendants filed by Willis’s office last August seemed to be notching win after win. The case was lauded by many in the press as the most comprehensive attempt to hold Trump accountable for trying to steal the 2020 election. And though a trial date had not yet been set, four of those co-defendants, including former Trump attorneys Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis, had already pleaded guilty.
But earlier this month, an attorney for another co-defendant, former Trump campaign aide Mike Roman, made some explosive allegations in a court filing.
These allegations center on the claim that Willis has been having a “clandestine personal relationship” with a special prosecutor she had brought on to the case, Nathan Wade. That alone would not seem to be disqualifying. But Roman’s attorney alleges several improprieties about Wade’s role, including that he was unqualified for the job (his prosecutorial experience is very thin), that Willis overpaid him, and that he then paid for vacations they took together.
Some legal experts have said these allegations aren’t a big enough deal to warrant her removal. Others are more concerned. “If her choices to extend or prolong the investigation benefit a romantic partner, who is paying for her meals and vacations, that is an actual conflict,” Georgia defense attorney Andrew Fleischman writes in the Daily Beast. “Willis needs to level with the public, and she needs to do it fast,” former federal prosecutor Ankush Khardori writes in Politico Magazine.
Willis and Wade gave their first response to these claims in a February 2 court filing. In an affidavit, Wade said he’d “developed a personal relationship” with Willis after joining the investigation in 2022. But he said he never shared a joint financial account or household expenses with her, adding that, though he did pay for some travel they took together, she paid for other travel.
Willis also disputed that there was anything unusual about Wade’s appointment or pay, and asserted there is no conflict. “One may question whether the intent is to disqualify the prosecutor who has taken on all of the abuse to pursue justice in this case at great personal cost, only to be substituted with someone less committed to do so,” she wrote.
Next, Judge Scott McAfee will hold a hearing about this topic on February 15. If McAfee decides there is impropriety here, he can disqualify Willis’s office from prosecuting the case. If that happens, the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia would get to choose a replacement prosecutor — and the path forward for the case would depend on whom they choose.
But, needless to say, the prosecutor getting tossed would not be a good sign for getting this case tried before election day.
The chances that Trump will be a convicted felon by Election Day have dropped
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Well they always have a backup plan. Ask Robert Kennedy, Jr. if he knows about such a plan. I know he does.
That sentiment is not just held by Democrats. I've seen it expressed on FR by certain posters (then again, those may be "undeclared Democrats").
We know. It was lawfare from the start.
The Charlie Brown left are feeling the pain again.
If the commie left knows they are going to lose and they cant throw him in prison they will try assassination with the full backing of the commie press..they have practically begged someone to do it claiming it would “Save Democracy”
FR has a handful of rat trolls
I think the DNC or some smart guy high up in dim political circles realized that this lawfare was backfiring and decided to ease off. They probably also realized that a conviction would assure a Trump victory.
The goal was the creation of a narrative that can be drummed into the heads of anyone considering a vote for Trump.
Think Russia, Russia, Russia.
democrats, full of hate for Trump and lacking in any sense of right/wrong, will try other illegal, unfair or false tactics to stop Trump. There is nothing they feel is unjustified. They have tried dragging out the lying whores, inventing a whole story of collusion with Russia, two impeachments, a deadly disease, massive fraud at the polling places and fake trials.
I don’t know what they will do next.
No wonder they want to make adjustments to the Supreme Court before elections are over.
To do this they must double down on making adjustments to the vote count.
Biden can’t beat the MAGA meme machine online, SC kingmaker Jim Clyburn says
By Jarrett Renshaw, news.yahoo.com
COLUMBIA, South Carolina (Reuters) - President Joe Biden’s reelection bid won’t be won by million-dollar ad buys or social media sound bites, says U.S. Representative James Clyburn, the man who was key to Biden’s 2020 win.
Republican candidate Donald Trump’s supporters have built a “MAGA wall” online of memes and social media noise that is overwhelming news about Biden’s economic and policy wins, making it impossible to get Democrats’ message across, Clyburn said in a recent interview in his hometown of Columbia, South Carolina.
Clyburn, who at 83 is arguably the most influential Black political voice in the United States, says Biden’s campaign needs to focus more attention on building a historic ground game filled with “voices and validators” who can energize voters and combat a looming disinformation campaign.”If we are going to be successful in this campaign, we are going to have to have what I call hand-to-hand combat, boots on the ground. We are going to have to do what is necessary to circumvent, or smash through that MAGA wall that is being built on sound bites,” Clyburn said, referring to the acronym for Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan.
Asked for comment, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said, “Crooked Joe Biden and his allies are scared because they know that no amount of excuses can explain away four years of misery and destruction under their watch.”
Biden is projected to cruise to victory in Saturday’s South Carolina primary election, the first officially sanctioned contest in the Democratic nomination race. He is expected to face Trump in November in a rematch of the 2020 election.
Four years ago, Clyburn effectively resuscitated Biden’s struggling presidential campaign with an endorsement that gave the candidate a comeback primary election victory in South Carolina.
The congressman’s call for an unprecedented ground game - which includes enlisting people to knock on doors and speak at social gatherings - underscores his deep concerns about a looming widespread disinformation campaign.
It also reflects broader concerns over whether Biden, 81, has the skills and charisma needed to sell the public on his accomplishments and the economy. The president spent last summer touring the country to boast about his economic accomplishments, but voters still give him poor marks on the economy.
“So when people tell me what a bad communicator Joe Biden has been, I say to them, don’t confuse goodness with weakness. These are people who basically want to hear a sound bite that makes for a good headline, but that sound bite seldom makes good headway. And Joe Biden is all about making headway,” Clyburn said.
The South Carolina congressman, one several Biden campaign co-chairs, is part of a small group of Democrats that include Barack Obama who are urging Biden to ramp up his campaign efforts and take a more offensive posture against Trump.
The campaign has begun heeding those calls, with Biden invoking Trump much more often and top staffers leaving the White House to bolster the campaign.
Clyburn said he advised the Biden campaign to look at how former Philadelphia Mayor James Kenney, a white Democrat, won two terms in a majority Black city in 2015 and 2019.
“It was boots on the ground. He won that race from door to door,” Clyburn said.
During a recent dinner celebrating South Carolina’s rise to the top of the Democratic Party’s nominating calendar, Clyburn offered evidence of the power of what he calls validators. In the cadence of a pastor, Clyburn preached to the crowd of largely Black supporters about Biden’s accomplishments, often speaking in the local parlance of someone who has spent eight decades in the region.
When Biden took the stage, he quipped: “If I were smart, I’d say thank you and leave. Jim made the case for me better than I can.”
(Reporting By Jarrett Renshaw; Editing by Heather Timmons and Jonathan Oatis)
“Delays have piled up in federal court proceedings in the District of Columbia case about Trump’s attempt to steal the 2020 election and the Florida classified documents case against Trump,”
Note the avoidance of the term “allegedly” which is almost always used when describing people suspected of crimes, but not for Trump, and not for Kyle Rittenhouse. No, for some people guilt is simply presumed in the gaslight media.
“Well they always have a backup plan. Ask Robert Kennedy, Jr. if he knows about such a plan. I know he does.”
There is a difference though. RFK’s knowledge has to do with kin folk getting whacked.
If Trump pulls it off he will not only have the secret service, but his own private security people protecting him. That’s a major difference.
I also have a feeling job one is to overhaul the intel agencies to root out the anti-Constitutional commies. Doing this is where he will be at his greatest risk. If he can pull this off then he should be as safe as possible.
I have never been in favor of assassinating any President, dem or pub. To do so would set the country on fire with internal revolt from the affected party. This would open us up for more overseas conflict, which would be a two front war. We’d lose bigly.
If the rats manage to eliminate Trump, everyone gets screwed, rats too. But I think they are too power mad and loony to know it.
This election day will be all or nothing for either party that could rapidly evolve into a nothing for the whole damn world.
To me, minimizing Fani’s illicit and unethical actions the way they are doing here is ridiculous!
1. She hired a special prosecutor (her boyfriend, no less) and paid him far more than others with more experience.
2. She personally benefitted from the higher payments, since he used his fees to buy her gifts, trips, et. al. This is called “money laundering”.
3. She is trying Trump for RICO violations, yet she herself has engaged in RICO, that is colluding with others to subvert funds to their own gain.
4. She had an employee whistleblower tell her (it’s on tape) that a $500,000 federal grant was being used in her office for unauthorized purchases. This employee was fired by Willis. Willis has used the specious argument that this is only being publicized because of Racism!, yet this employee was a black woman.
5. The judge in the Trump case, the US House, the Ga. House, the Ga. Senate and the Fulton County commissioner (auditor) have all demanded that she explain her actions regarding abuse of funds.
Yet somehow, reading this article, it implies these unethical and criminal violations are “no big deal”.
The Democrat plan is not working. Usually a Republican would fold and give up with just the threat of charges being brought (look how easy they got rid of Richard Nixon).
I don’t think they ever expected to go to trial I belive they just wanted a steady drip of charges to be enough to take him out.
Now they face real judges who may actually want to look at the evidence.
No crime has been committed.
Now here is where human nature comes into play.
We are in a historical point in our nation’s history. Every thing that is going on, every document, every news article, every judgement is going into the permanent record of your history and just as important every player’s life will become part of that history, every secret they have kept hidden will be discovered as historians research and write about the events occurring in the 2024 election.
Now you are a sitting judge what do you do?
Do you accept the fake evidence the democrats are presenting and block the path of Trump becoming the next President or do you rule in favor of Trump and allow the American people to choose?
The projection is strong with this one.
FR has become a platform used by government ops.
The South Carolina congressman, one several Biden campaign co-chairs, is part of a small group of Democrats that include Barack Obama who are urging Biden to ramp up his campaign efforts and take a more offensive posture against Trump.
can this dementia patient get any more offensive?
That’s just invented palaver to cover-up voter fraud.
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