Merrick Garland, Donald Trump, & The Fall Of France

[muriel_volestrangler]

19. In your opinion, what are the chances of the trial of Trump for election subversion concluding before the election?

And if you think they're significant, please give some reasons. The case for it being delayed:

Early October: Verdict.

This is the outlook if everything breaks Smith’s way. But a thousand things could throw it off. The Supreme Court might not rule until the very end of its current term, which will carry into late June or early July. The justices might not issue a final ruling at all and could instead send the case back down to the trial court to determine whether Trump acted within the scope of his job as president. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan might decline to set a trial date that would overlap the final stages of the general-election campaign and culminate in a verdict potentially within weeks of the election. Trump’s other federal case, the Mar-A-Lago classified-documents matter, could be pushed back from its current late-May trial date to July or August, which would effectively block the election-subversion case altogether.
...
Let’s be clear here: On the whole, this case is proceeding on a normal (or, if anything, expedited) timeline. Smith filed his indictment in August 2023, and it’s exceedingly rare for a federal indictment of this scope and complexity — with discovery including over 13 million pages of documents and thousands of hours of video — to get to trial in less than a year and a half. And it’s fast, if anything, for the Court to grant certiorari within three weeks of the filing of a petition and then to hear oral arguments less than two months later. CNN’s Supreme Court expert, Joan Biskupic, notes that “overall, the timetable is fast compared to the regular calendar for high-court briefing.” If there were no election around the corner, nobody would raise an eyebrow at the pace of this case or the Court’s decision to take it. Certainly, the Court has declined to expedite the case to Smith’s liking, but that’s not the same as delaying it.
...
So who gets the blame here if the trial slips past the election? Trump’s the defendant — the one whose personal liberty is at stake and who might die behind bars if he loses — and he is absolutely entitled to defend himself zealously. Any marginally competent defense lawyer would raise the immunity argument and aim to get the trial moved until after the election. This isn’t about lying down to appease the political wishes of some broad swath of the general populace; this is blood sport with Trump’s hide on the line, and this is how the game is played. If you want to cast blame, look across the courtroom at the Justice Department. They’re the ones who controlled the timeline yet dithered away more than two and a half years before indicting, leaving virtually no margin for error to get the case tried before November 2024.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/why-supreme-court-ignored-jack-smith-trump-prosecution-timeline.html