Former President Donald Trump is heading into a hectic campaign season with court dates that could foster logistical and legal complications for an already unprecedented election.
The first quarter of 2024 has a host of primaries and caucuses that will determine the eventual Republican presidential nominee. During the same timeframe, the former president is scheduled to start at least two new trials with other appellate and pre-trial proceedings in the works.
President Trump will begin his defamation trial with writer E. Jean Carroll on Jan. 16, defend his presidential immunity claims in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on Jan. 9, and have a hearing for motions to dismiss his New York hush-money case on Jan. 5.
Just a day after the scheduled start date for President Trump’s D.C. trial, 14 primary elections will take place on Super Tuesday, March 5. In the weeks leading up to Super Tuesday, Republicans will conduct a series of primaries: New Hampshire on Jan. 23, South Carolina on Feb. 24, and the Idaho caucus on March 2.
President Trump’s complex legal and political timelines have created an untold number of scenarios for the election season as separate court cases could bear on each other’s outcomes and even the electoral landscape for 2024.
This is perhaps best illustrated by the dozens of 14th Amendment-related ballot challenges raised in states across the country. The U.S. Supreme Court is poised to review those cases, and potentially a series of underlying constitutional questions.
Maine’s secretary of state and the Colorado Supreme Court have deemed President Trump disqualified from their primary ballots because he allegedly violated Section 3 of the amendment by engaging in an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.
President Trump’s activities surrounding that day have come under scrutiny in multiple cases, including in Georgia and D.C. Reviewing those and other cases could open a pandora’s box in which the Supreme Court’s initial and follow-up opinions alter precedent on pivotal issues for the election.
The D.C. trial’s start date of March 4 is looking increasingly unlikely as President Trump challenges Judge Tanya Chutkan’s refusal to accept one of his motions to dismiss, which argued that his actions on Jan. 6 were covered by the doctrine of presidential immunity.
Judge Chutkan has already stayed proceedings over that issue and it could last months depending on how the Supreme Court acts. Because the justices declined Special Counsel Jack Smith’s request to fast-track the presidential immunity issue, it will go before the D.C. circuit on Jan. 9 and potentially undergo additional review from the Supreme Court.
That decision could upend the D.C. trial and have implications for other proceedings. At the same time, the Supreme Court is preparing to hear whether the federal government improperly charged Jan. 6 defendants under the same statute under which President Trump was indicted in D.C.
President Trump is asserting not only that his actions surrounding Jan. 6 were covered under presidential immunity, but that trying him for those events would violate his constitutional protection against double jeopardy. The U.S. Senate, the argument goes, already considered and effectively acquitted President Trump on an article of impeachment the House advanced for inciting an insurrection.
The ultimate impact of those cases is unclear but they seem to present the biggest potential interruption to the election season as multiple battleground states could theoretically disqualify President Trump from their ballots.
Trump’s Place Within the GOP Field
The deadline for President Trump to provide formal notice regarding his advice of counsel is Jan. 15, the same day as the Republican Iowa caucus, which serves as an early indicator of candidates’ popularity.The Iowa result is by no means determinative, though, as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), rather than then-candidate Trump, won Iowa during the 2016 presidential election cycle. Each of President Trump’s current competitors, however, has consistently lagged behind him in Iowa and other states’ polling.
So far, the recent unfavorable legal actions towards President Trump have been limited to indictments and pre-trial judgments, such as the highly controversial gag order that was issued by Judge Chutkan and later pared down by an appellate court in December 2023.
That’s set to change, however, if New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron sticks with the Jan. 31 deadline for providing a written decision in President Trump’s civil fraud case. That ruling could include $370 million in fines and prohibit him from doing business in the state.
Definitive rebukes by that judge and other courts could influence President Trump’s popularity and, subsequently, how his Republican competitors discuss him. Regardless of how much attention they want to give him, whoever remains in the GOP primary field will likely receive questions about President Trump’s cases. The cases could also help draw attention away from his GOP competitors, as Florida Gov. DeSantis indicated when he complained that the multiple indictments “just crowded out I think so much other stuff and it’s sucked out a lot of oxygen.”
The proximity between the D.C. trial date (March 4) and Super Tuesday (March 5) will likely amplify this aspect of President Trump’s presence in the race, author Henry Olsen indicated.
“If it actually takes place that day, then it will clearly dominate the news … it'll be impossible for a Republican contender, assuming one is still there after the first few primaries to make any news that isn’t revolving around that,” Mr. Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Institute, told The Epoch Times.
“So I think that’s going to pose a huge challenge to that person—because it effectively means that for days ahead of time, the only question that the media will want to ask is, what do you think about the president’s trial and what do you think about January 6?”
Primary debates in Iowa (Jan. 10) and New Hampshire (Jan. 18 and Jan. 21) could offer candidates the opportunity to either rally behind President Trump, as Republican Vivek Ramaswamy has, or express hesitation, as Gov. DeSantis seemed to do when he said President Trump should exit the race if convicted.
The issue of Jan. 6 is “one [Republican candidates] have not wanted to address for the obvious reason that most polls show Republicans think that January 6 was not a big deal … and that the election in 2020 economy was stolen,” Mr. Olsen said.
Campaigning From the Courtroom
Multiple experts have converged on the idea that a busy legal schedule will likely hinder traditional campaigning for President Trump, who tends to thrive with in-person crowds. Defendants in criminal trials generally appear at trial but it’s unclear whether judges will offer President Trump some kind of flexibility given his unique circumstances as a leading presidential candidate who is also starting several trials within a year.
During a hearing in October, Judge Chutkan emphasized that the D.C. trial would not yield to a presidential campaign but that’s already been derailed by an appeal.
“I think it will be very difficult for him to maintain the kind of schedule we’ve seen in the past where he’s traveling all across the country and having rallies and things—because in a criminal case, he’s going to be required to be in the courtroom,” said Barbara McQuade, a University of Michigan law professor who left the Department of Justice (DOJ) at the beginning of the Trump administration.
“On the other hand, it probably gives him an opportunity for a lot of publicity to address his supporters on the courthouse steps. So I think it will look different,” she said.
The ultimate effect of his appearing in court rather than on the campaign trail remains to be seen. But if his New York civil fraud trial is any indication, President Trump will likely use the trial to make gestures or statements that will garner media coverage.
President Trump’s statements could prompt sanctions like the ones previously imposed by Justice Engoron, as well as potential prohibitions on social media usage and home confinement. If they did, it could further destabilize an already hectic campaign season.
President Trump, meanwhile, accused the special counsel of trying to suppress his First Amendment right to free speech after the DOJ asked Judge Chutkan in a Dec. 27, 2023, filing not to allow “the defendant to turn the courtroom into a forum in which he propagates irrelevant disinformation, and should reject his attempt to inject politics into this proceeding.”
“I think most of these judges would really be loath to jail him,” said Ms. McQuade. “But I suppose if he were to continue to violate a gag order with impunity, that’s the ultimate penalty they have available for him. I think it is a politically dangerous move because his campaign would frame it as victimization.”
President Trump’s poll numbers counterintuitively increased after the Biden administration issued its August 2023 indictment alleging criminal wrongdoing in the events surrounding Jan. 6. Although polling showed majorities supporting the prosecution of President Trump, he both maintained a strong lead among his Republican rivals and beat out President Joe Biden in a series of head-to-head matchups reported after the indictment.
President Trump’s reputation as “Teflon Don” isn’t new for the man who, despite facing a wave of media criticism, beat Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, as well as a highly qualified field of Republican governors and senators in 2016. Cultural and institutional forces will likely continue opposing President Trump before the election but, in doing so, could energize Trump’s new and seemingly expanding base of support.
Big Data Poll Director Rich Baris told The Epoch Times that the legal action against President Trump has enlarged his support among non-white voters.
“Without a doubt, the prosecutions are helping him with a certain non-white contingency in the general election … you’ve made one of them. You made him somewhat of a folk hero … and they may have been subjected to this arbitrary, abusive system for a long time.”
“And now they feel like … they have something in common with him … so they made him relatable,” Mr. Baris said. He said that “when we’re polling, we hear it all the time … from black voters, Hispanic voters, we hear it all the time.”
“‘Well, that’s my boy. They’re going after him. That’s my boy now, I’m with them. I’m gonna vote for him, even if he’s in jail’—I mean, they’re probably the most resolute … They just don’t care, because they see the system as crooked, and corrupt, and dirty, just as much as a white working-class voter from the Ohio Valley does.”
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