Donald Trump’s lawyers have already begun sounding out the former president’s defense to charges that he tried to subvert the will of voters and prevent the peaceful transfer of power to Joe Biden.
His assertion that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him is speech protected by the First Amendment, they’ll argue. Trump likely will also claim he indeed believed he was the victim of election fraud, even if that notion was wholly baseless. And he might chalk up his actions to bad postelection advice from his lawyers.
No one would be surprised, however, if the anchor to his defense turned out to be an all-out effort to stall, delay, drag out. If Trump were to win the 2024 election before trial, he could effectively shut down the federal cases pending against him and could in turn show special counsel Jack Smith the door.
Consider what Trump lawyer John Lauro said during an interview on NBC’s “Today” show: Smith had more than three years to build a case against Trump, so why can’t Trump have the same amount of time to craft a defense?
“Why don’t we make it equal?” he said. “The bottom line is that they have 60 federal agents working on this … and we get this indictment and they want to go to trial in 90 days. Does that sound like justice?”
The former president is entitled to ample time to build his defense against multiple indictments. That’s due process, and like any other criminal defendant, Trump deserves a right to fair trial.
That doesn’t mean, however, that Trump gets to forestall justice by churning out a series of delay tactics aimed at running out the clock. In the case revolving around Trump’s attempts to subvert the 2020 election, it’s on U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan’s shoulders to ensure that the former president doesn’t stall his way out of a verdict.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to the latest charges and to charges in previous two indictments. Like any defendant, he is presumed innocent.
But Chutkan should not concern herself with Trump’s campaign schedule. Nor should any other judge presiding over a criminal case against the former president. Judges in these cases have a single, paramount assignment — ensuring that justice occurs fairly and unimpeded. That means resisting any ham-handed attempt by Trump’s lawyers to stave off trial proceedings.
Succumbing to such attempts could allow Trump to sidestep accountability — an unspeakable prospect given the sheer contempt the former president displayed for this nation’s democratic ideals.
There’s another reason why the trials Trump faces, particularly the election subversion charges, should be firewalled from any Trump team stalling.
If Trump is guilty of attempting to undermine democracy, Americans should know that before they vote in the 2024 presidential election. It’s hard to imagine anything more disqualifying or more antithetical to what it means to be president than that.
