Football season kickoff is only weeks away, as fans begin to break out the stats to analyze and make the case for how their favorites will perform, with prior performance being among the best indicators of future performance.
Let's take that metrics model to another venue. Following the 2020 Presidential Election, then-President Donald J. Trump, his campaign team, certain White House staff and Stop the Steal minions in multiple states, waged legal battles in state and federal courts, with a wide array of filings, pleas, and arguments, citing allegations of voter fraud, misconduct, bad faith and violations of state statutes, state Constitutions and flawed execution of the Electoral College. Team Trump waded into more than 70 filings and legal battles, and their win/loss record, in multiple red and blue states, often in front of federal and appellate judges also appointed by Donald Trump...0-70. Additionally, where are the esteemed leaders of those efforts now?
America's Mayor, Rudolph Guiliani, also a distinguished former U.S. Attorney, is now disbarred to practice law in New York (his home state) and the District of Columbia and has been notified that he is a target of the Grand Jury proceedings in Georgia, expected to get underway next week. Also facing disbarment in Georgia, respected plaintiff's attorney Lin Wood retired and relinquished his law license. Lawyer Sidney Powell (keeper of the Kraken), earlier this month lost her appeal before the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, along with five other Trump lawyers, and was ordered to pay fines totaling $152,000 (reduced from $175,000). Ms. Powell, at this point, still has her law license.
The former President in three separate trials pending, faces 78 felony charges, and this week Fulton County District Attorney Fanni Willis brought forth an additional 13 felony indictments of President Trump, Mr. Guiliani, and 19-named co-conspirators all related to attempts to overturn Georgia's Presidential election results from November of 2020. That brings the President's felony indictment tally to 91 counts, though I will note the presumption of innocence continues until guilt is proven, given the results of all the prior filings by various Trump lawyers, I wouldn't be too optimistic.
Seeking and potentially winning the White House again is perhaps the only legal strategy that makes sense for the embattled former Commander in Tweet. Along with delaying actual trials as long as possible and seeking potential venue changes.
Separate minor civics lesson here... Even a President of the United States can not pardon a conviction in Superior Court in Georgia. Georgia's Governor also has no powers to pardon. The Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles is a five-member gubernatorially appointed board, solely charged with the power of executive clemency. Board members are appointed to 7-year terms which alternate, and are confirmed by the Georgia State Senate.
The Stormy Daniels case might embarrass most people, but President Trump lives in a world beyond embarrassment, where openly cheating on each and every spouse is viewed as an indicator of virility and manhood. The secret records charges at Mar-a-Lago, Bedminster, and elsewhere are watered down by other prior Presidents and Vice-Presidents apparently being incapable of reading file labels of Top Secret in multiple residences as well.
Like a lot of Americans, I don't like the timing of these charges of all these charges, in the midst of a Presidential campaign underway, but we have to acknowledge that the Covid19 pandemic all but shuttered courthouses at the local, state, and federal level, delaying caseloads and court appearances across the board for in excess of two years.
Team Biden should not yet rejoice. The timing of all these cases does make the system appear biased even if it is not. And the ham-handed handling of Presidential son Hunter Biden’s legal challenges makes it only MORE appear that since his days as Number 2 in the Obama Administration, Joe Biden is either incompetent or potentially engaged in the criminal enterprises in which his son appears completely engulfed in. And oddly, nearing half the field of GOP Presidential candidates all eying an ailing and increasingly fragile President Joe Biden each offer varying versions of promise to later pardon President Trump, of any and all federal charges associated with the assault on our nation's Capitol on January 6, 2021.
November 2024 is still a long way away in the world of Presidential politics. Plenty of time for legal maneuvering and jury pools to have a lot more to do with deciding the outcome of the 2024 Presidential election than most state caucuses and primaries.
