by Steven Richards
At one time, the unfavorable outcomes of four lawsuits against former President Donald Trump seemed likely to be politically damaging to the three-time activist, but as the cases were scrutinized and delayed, public opinion recently transferred.
Yesterday, the Georgia Court of Appeals agreed to hear a state election appeal brought by controversial Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. Earlier this week, a Florida judge indefinitely suspended a federal lawsuit over classified documents.
Because the Jan. 6 federal case was delayed pending the Supreme Court’s ruling on the immunity argument, which it heard this spring, Trump will now see significant delays in three of the four lawsuits brought against him by state and federal prosecutors. Only the trial in New York regarding the so-called “hush money”, although key witnesses such as porn star Stormy Daniels seemed to undermine certain aspects of the case.
Delays loom as the 2024 election approaches. The former president – and now the presumptive GOP nominee – is plagued by court cases from the beginning of 2023 often hampering his campaign efforts. In airy of recent events, it is increasingly likely that three of these issues will be postponed until the November elections, which bodes well for his campaign.
“President Trump has established a decisive lead in the battleground polls, and Crooked Joe Biden is on the ropes. “His Democratic Party allies know this, and they continue to escalate their ongoing witch hunt by continuing to abuse and misuse the power of their offices to interfere in the presidential election,” Steven Cheung, Trump campaign communications director, said in a statement 2024. Until Only News Wednesday.
“President Trump and his team will continue to fight these unconstitutional frauds in the courts, and the American people will finally hold Crooked Joe and his comrades accountable this fall,” he added.
When the Georgia Court of Appeals on Wednesday he agreed to hear an appeal by Trump’s lawyers in his Georgia election interference case marked the latest in a series of delays in the state case.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who charged Trump in August 2023, accused him and several co-defendants racketeering conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.
The first delay came when one of Trump’s co-defendants became involved he raised accusations that District Attorney Fani Willis engaged in inappropriate romantic and financial relationships with lead prosecutor Nathan Wade. She is accused of personally benefiting from this relationship.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, who is presiding over the case, held hearings to review calls for Willis’ disqualification. Ultimately, McAfee ruled that the district attorney’s conduct was inappropriate and that Willis or her prosecutor, Wade, would have to step down from the case. Wade complied, leaving Willis in place.
Trump and his co-defendants immediately appealed his decision, as did McAfee given. Now that the Georgia Court of Appeals has accepted this interlocutory appeal, it will likely result in a settlement further delays.
Earlier this week, U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon the start date has been moved to May 20 closed documents hearing for an indefinite period in connection with several pre-trial motions occupying the calendar.
“The Court also finds that setting a trial date at this stage – prior to the resolution of the myriad and interconnected pre-trial and CIPA proceedings [Classified Information Procedures Act] remaining and future issues – would be imprudent and inconsistent with the Court’s duty to fully and fairly consider the various pretrial motions pending before the Court, the critical CIPA issues, and the additional pretrial and trial preparation necessary to present this case to the jury,” Cannon wrote in her order.
“Accordingly, the Court cancels the current hearing date of May 20, 2024 (and the associated calendar hearing date), which is to be reinstated by a separate order following the disposition of the matters before the Court, consistent with defendants’ right to a fair trial and the public interest in the fair and effective administration of justice,” she added.
The statement marked a victory for the Trump team, which had previously asked the judge to postpone the case until after the 2024 elections, which she then refused to do.
Trump’s team raised another issue this week that could also further stall the trial.
On Monday, Trump filed a up-to-date motion in the case, noting the government’s admission that “the prosecutorial team failed to preserve the integrity of the contents of at least some of the boxes obtained from Mar-a-Lago.”
In a lawsuit filed in response to efforts by Trump co-defendant Walt Nauta to further delay the case, Smith admitted that the team failed to properly preserve evidence collected during the Mar-a-Lago raid.
“Because these inventories and scans were created just before the documents were seized, they provide the best evidence available about the order in which the documents were seized. “That said, in some cases the order of the items within them is not the same as in the related scans,” prosecutors wrote.
In a footnote explaining the issue, the government also acknowledged that “it is inconsistent with what Government Counsel previously understood and presented to the Court.”
Getting to the bottom of this admission, which Trump’s legal team says constitutes an “extraordinary violation.” [the prosecutors’] “constitutional and ethical” threatens to take up much of Judge Cannon’s free time, even as the election approaches. – PJ Media reported that the FBI “staged” photos after raiding Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, stating, as the Justice Department alleged in an August 2022 lawsuit: “[Thirteen] there were classified documents in the boxes or containers, and in total, over a hundred unique classified documents were secured. Some documents had colored covers to indicate their secret status.”
According to PJ Media, it turns out that the Department of Justice published a photo showing the alleged contraband confiscated that day at Donald Trump’s estate in Palm Beach; the photo showed colorful sheets showing secrecy levels attached to files allegedly discovered in Trump’s private office. Now the Department of Justice says:[If] the investigation team found a document with security markings, removed it, sorted it and replaced it with a replacement sheet. The investigation team used secret cover pages for this purpose.”
The former president’s next federal case, in which Trump was charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States and various counts of obstruction in connection with his alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election results, also hit speed bumps.
There was a hearing originally planned to begin on March 4, but Trump appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking to be granted broad criminal immunity that comes with the perks of the presidential office.
In February, the Supreme Court announced that it would hear the case and examine “whether and to what extent the former president is entitled to presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct allegedly related to official acts while in office,” according to the Supreme Court’s ruling. NBC News. Trump’s claims were originally rejected by an appeals court, saying he was not immune.
The court heard arguments in the case in overdue April but has not yet issued a ruling on the case. In the interrogation, analysts believed they seemed hesitant to grant broad immunities, but seemed likely to grant narrow immunities of office.
Regardless of the court’s ruling, the proceedings significantly delayed the start of the trial, which had already started by over two months since the originally planned date.
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Steven Richards joined Just the News in August 2023 after previously working as a research analyst at the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) in Tallahassee, Florida.
“Donald Trump NYC” photo by Daniel Scavino Jr..
