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It was the perfect strategy — Democratic prosecutors would hit former
President Donald Trump with so many indictments and lawsuits that, rather
than campaigning, he would spend the entire election season defending
himself inside a courtroom. Surely at least one of the charges would
result in a conviction before Election Day. And President Joe Biden would cruise to victory.
But, as they say, the devil fools with the best-laid plans. District
attorneys and prosecutors have love affairs and even perjure themselves,
trials get delayed, and there are still a few judges left who believe that
no one should be “deprived of life, liberty, or property without due
process of law” — not even a defendant as reviled as Trump.
Trump racked up some big wins last week against his aggressors. On
Wednesday, the Supreme Court agreed to consider his claim of immunity from prosecution on charges of plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The justices will hear arguments in the case the week of April
22, and a decision will occur sometime in June. Although it is widely
expected that the court will reject Trump’s immunity claim, the Wall
Street Journal’s Alex Leary noted the delay “could buy him valuable time
and fits with an overall delay-tactic strategy in the other cases he
faces.” In other words, it dashes special counsel Jack Smith’s hopes for a speedy trial before November’s election.
Meanwhile, Florida Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump nominee and the presiding
judge in the government’s case against Trump for the mishandling of
classified documents, delivered another blow to the special counsel. The
trial, already postponed from its original start date of May 20, will be delayed even further. Politico reported that “on Thursday evening, Smith
urged her to set a new trial date of July 8, while Trump’s lawyers renewed their longstanding position that the trial should not occur until after
the election.”
On Friday, Cannon told the court that a “lot of work needs to be done in
the pretrial phase of this case.” She suggested that Smith’s timeline is “unrealistic.”
Perhaps the best news for Trump last week came from Georgia. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s prosecution of Trump and 18 co-defendants
under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act looks
like it’s about to implode. Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee has presided
over two weeks of hearings regarding whether Willis and her ex-lover
Nathan Wade should be disqualified from handling the case.
Terrence Bradley, Wade’s former divorce attorney, law partner, and friend,
took the stand last week to answer questions about when the romantic relationship between Willis and Wade started. Willis and Wade have each
claimed in sworn statements and on the witness stand that their romantic relationship began after Willis hired Wade as a special prosecutor.
Bradley, however, confirmed to Georgia attorney Ashleigh Merchant, who is representing former Trump campaign official Michael Roman, one of the co- defendants in the RICO case, that the romantic relationship between Willis
and Wade began shortly after they had met in 2019, long before Wade was
hired as a special prosecutor. Indeed, in a lengthy series of text message exchanges between Merchant and Bradley that occurred from September
through January, Bradley was extremely forthcoming and seemed eager to
help Merchant with the investigation.
But despite his earlier cooperation with Merchant, Bradley was the
ultimate reluctant witness when he took the stand on Tuesday. His
responses were punctuated with long pauses and repeated claims of not
being able to recall events or even text messages he’d written as recently
as January. He told the court he had no personal knowledge about the relationship between Willis and Wade. When directly asked why he had told Merchant in a text message that the relationship had begun before Willis
hired Wade, Bradley said, “I was speculating, and I never witnessed
anything. It was speculation.”
Bradley also told the court he had not spoken to Wade in two years. Unfortunately for Bradley, a waiter who claimed to have served Bradley,
Wade, and Wade’s attorney in an Atlanta restaurant just five weeks ago
called Merchant. Podcaster Megyn Kelly played a recording of the phone
call on her Friday program. If the waiter’s information turns out to be
true, then Bradley perjured himself — possibly for the second time.
Following closing arguments on Friday, McAfee said he would reach a
decision on whether to disqualify Willis from the case in the next two
weeks. His ruling has the power to delay or even derail the case against
Trump entirely.
Not even NBC legal analyst and former prosecutor Kristen Gibbons Feden
thought the closing arguments went well for Willis and Wade. After
praising the performance of the Merchant team, she said, “I just have to
say, the state is going to have to bring it on.”
It turns out that weaponizing the law against a political opponent isn’t
as easy as it looks. Democrats are losing control of trial schedules, and
now they can’t even be sure which Georgia district attorney office will prosecute the case — if it ever goes to trial. The unhappy reality for Democrats is that their lawfare campaign against Trump isn’t working out
quite the way they had anticipated.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/2901344/are- democrats-losing-control-over-their-lawfare-campaign-against-trump/
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