All Federal Charges Against Trump Dismissed
Justice delayed is justice denied.
Last week, this happened:
NYT (“Trump’s Sentencing in New York Is Officially on Hold“):
A New York judge on Friday postponed President-elect Donald J. Trump’s sentencing in his Manhattan criminal case, confirming that the former and future president would not receive his punishment next week.
Mr. Trump was convicted in May of falsifying business records to cover up a sex scandal and was scheduled to be sentenced on Tuesday, but his election victory made that all but impossible. The judge had already decided to halt the sentencing while Mr. Trump’s lawyers sought to have the whole case thrown out.
Prosecutors from the office of Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, declined to drop the case this week, noting that a jury had already convicted Mr. Trump. But they agreed to delay the sentencing and signaled a willingness to freeze the case for four years while Mr. Trump holds office.
So far, the judge, Juan M. Merchan, has not ruled on whether to freeze the case or dismiss it. He simply confirmed on Friday that Mr. Trump’s lawyers could formally seek a dismissal, and that the sentencing would be on hold while the defense submitted its arguments.
The battle over whether to dismiss the case could stretch on for months or more and ultimately reach the U.S. Supreme Court. If he ultimately loses in the courts, Mr. Trump could be sentenced once he leaves office. He faces up to four years in prison.
I don’t like it one bit, it seemed like the correct outcome all things considered. Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts on May 30 but sentencing was inexplicably set for November 26. Having been elected President in the interim, it would have been bizarre, indeed, to have him go to jail on state-level charges of which the voters were presumably quite aware on Election Day. Delaying the sentencing until after his second term is the least bad option.
The other shoe dropped yesterday.
NYT (“Jack Smith Seeks Dismissal of Two Federal Cases Against Trump“):
The special counsel Jack Smith asked two courts on Monday to effectively shut down the federal criminal cases he brought against President-elect Donald J. Trump last year, bowing to a Justice Department policy that says it is unconstitutional to pursue prosecutions against sitting presidents.
The twin requests by Mr. Smith — made to judges in Washington and Atlanta — were an acknowledgment that Mr. Trump will re-enter the White House in January unburdened by federal efforts to hold him accountable through charges of plotting to subvert the last presidential election and holding on to a trove of highly classified material following his first term in office.
The double-barreled filings were also the latest sign that Mr. Smith and his team were working to close up shop after years of intensive investigation and courthouse drama that tested the justice system’s ability to hold a once-and-future president to account amid shifting politics, misinformation and evolving legal standards.
Hours after Mr. Smith submitted his requests, Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who is overseeing the election interference case in Washington, issued a brief order dismissing the proceeding.
Mr. Smith’s moves came after the president-elect began filling out his choices to lead the Justice Department. They followed Mr. Trump’s vow on the campaign trail to fire Mr. Smith within “two seconds” of taking office and to launch investigations into the prosecutors who pursued him, along with other perceived enemies. Mr. Smith has signaled that he intends to resign before Mr. Trump takes office.
In both of the court submissions, Mr. Smith made clear that his moves to end the charges against Mr. Trump were a necessity imposed on him by legal norms, rather than a decision made on the merits of the cases or because of problems with the evidence. The filings cited a Justice Department policy that sitting presidents may not be prosecuted.
I like this even less, as the federal charges were considerably more serious, not based on a novel legal theory, and related to his conduct while President. But, aside from the longstanding policy that the Justice Department does not pursue cases against a sitting President, it would seem to be the will of at least a plurality of American voters that Trump serves the next four years as President, notwithstanding his theft of classified documents and attempt to steal the previous election.
While my preference would have been to somehow suspend the investigation until the end of Trump’s term, there’s no practical way to do that. Theoretically, the materials from the investigation and court filings could be preserved, and the cases could be set back into motion in 2029. Realistically, that’s not going to happen even if a Democrat wins the next election. Presumably, they’d like to get on with implementing their policy agenda rather than getting bogged down with Trump.
Marc A. Thiessen and Danielle Pletka take the next logical leap, arguing, “Biden should pardon Trump.” Their lede gives them away as partisan hacks:
During his inaugural address, President Joe Biden promised to put his “whole soul” into ending what he called our nation’s “uncivil war” and “bringing America together.” He failed to deliver on that pledge, instead accusing Republicans of supporting “Jim Crow 2.0,” comparing them to George Wallace, Bull Connor and Jefferson Davis, and declaring right before the election that “the only garbage I see floating out there is [Trump’s] supporters.” (He later said, implausibly and without apologizing, that he was referring to the rhetoric displayed at Trump’s Oct. 27 rally at Madison Square Garden.)
But they have something of a case:
But while Trump might not need Biden’s pardon, America does.
More than a year ago in this space, we suggested that Biden should pardon Trump before the 2024 election. The threshold for the sitting president’s administration to indict the leading candidate of the opposing party should be extraordinarily high, we argued, and polls then showed that most Americans believed the charges were politically motivated. Continuing Trump’s prosecution would not only be divisive, it would erode public confidence in our judicial system and the principle of equal justice under law.
Unfortunately, Biden didn’t take our advice. Americans watched the unfolding legal spectacle, and in November they delivered their verdict, electing Trump decisively. In retrospect, Biden’s failure to shut down the Trump prosecutions helped make the former president’s improbable comeback possible, causing Republican primary voters — many of whom had been open to supporting another nominee — to rally around Trump, helping him to secure his party’s nomination and eventually the White House.
Trump has now endured an investigation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III (which concluded that he had not engaged in a criminal conspiracy with Russia), two impeachments, and 91 felony charges at the federal, state and local level — and has so far survived them all. As University of California at Berkeley law professor John Yoo put it recently during an interview for our podcast: “Trump has defeated lawfare.”
But while Trump has survived, the collateral damage to our democracy might only be beginning. Absent decisive action, we could find ourselves at the start of a vicious cycle, in which Republicans now argue they are justified in weaponizing the justice system to go after Democrats, and Democrats then feel free to retaliate when they regain power — sending the country spiraling into a miasma of partisan litigation.
Democrats might insist that Trump earned his indictments, but the spurious Mueller investigation undercut those claims in the eyes of the broader voting public. If we do not want to go through an endless cycle of what goes around comes around, a bold act of statesmanship is required: Biden should announce that he is issuing a blanket pardon for Trump, allowing him to start his presidency with a legal tabula rasa. In announcing his decision, he should recommend that state officials in New York and Georgia drop their cases, as well. “The American people have chosen Donald Trump to lead our country,” Biden should declare. “He deserves a chance to be successful — and America deserves a chance to heal.”
Hidden amongst the hackery lies a point. While underestimating the knowledge of the American public is nigh unto impossible, it would have been hard even for them to have missed the events of January 6, 2021. Clearly, at least half of them think it was not that big a deal. And, surely, the documents case pales in significance—especially since he’s about to once again become the ultimate classification authority. There is, then, a case to be made that pardoning Trump would be a magnanimous, healing gesture.
Mitigating that considerably, though, is Trump himself. Not only has he demonstrated not the slightest bit of remorse for inciting a riot that Americans killed and could have been a whole lot worse than it was on that score, but he’s doubled down since. He has declared his political enemies “vermin” and vowed to use his presidency to get revenge. Magnaninimy, in the face of that, is weakness, if not cowardice.
IANAL but how much of that “justice delayed” only happened because Trump’s lawyers deliberately challenged and in general did everything they could to delay it? As for sitting in jail while he’s waiting to be sworn in, I think it sounds great. Bring it!
It would certainly explain something if voters feel Covid happened under Biden.
Memory can be a tricky thing.
And another thing:
If America wants to be a nation of laws, it most definitely does not.
ETA: I’m getting strong “Kick me harder, daddy” vibes from this.
Why this utterly insane deference to authority? WTF is wrong with these people?
John Yoo – the lawyer who authored a legal opinion that any act that falls short of producing organ failure is not torture – should be laughed at and disregarded every time he opens his mouth, especially when he claims Trump defeated “lawfare.” Casting Trump as a victim defies the reality of the brazen criminality that he has dabbled in all of his life. The “spurious Mueller investigation” showed the Trump campaign was in fact in bed with and aided by Russian actors, so much so that Trump blatantly obstructed the probe. And remember, his lawyers wouldn’t let him testify because they knew he would perjure himself. The prerequisites to get a pardon are an admission of guilt and a demonstration of remorse – Trump fails in both areas. If Biden is going to issue any pardon it should be for his son, who actually WAS a victim of lawfare.
Given my poor memory I may be wrong, but is there a single charge on which Trump’s defense claimed he didn’t do the act charged? Yes, he claims he didn’t grab Carroll by the …., but that’s not what he was charged with. In every case his strategy has been delay, hoping for the black swan he just pulled off.
As I commented to Theissen at NYT, the threshold for charging the opposition candidate, who was not a candidate when charged, should be whether there is credible evidence he committed a crime. And there was, in the public record, in his company’s books, and piled up in his bathroom.
Rule of law my arse.
A pardon might send a signal of national unity, but I suppose that an abused spouse “forgiving” their abuser and allowing them back in the home contributes to familial unity as well.
But it sure sends the wrong signal of what is okay and what “unity” looks like.
@drj: Frankly, I don’t give a rat’s a** about whether something needs to be done to help heal America. This whole bullshit about “The President is above the law” got a jet-propelled boost when Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon. Do we want more of that? Perhaps we do.
One can admit defeat without giving everything away to the enemy.
Biden may pardon the felon. If he does, I, and a very large number of other people, will never forgive him for that.
Let them try a self pardon and see how that flies, or let him resign and have JD do it instead.
With a Republican loyalist in charge of the DOJ? Yeah, store next to the furnace or in the leaky basement.
It’s a frick’n policy, not a law. Policies are meant to be temporary and reviewed regularly. But they treat it like a law.
Pardoning Richard Nixon was a mistake. We have given a President too much power. Countries, including Western ones, around the world have put their Presidents in jail for wrong doings. I don’t see why the US should be any different.
I don’t see why Merchan couldn’t sentence Trump and then suspend the execution of that sentence.
And the right wing extremists in charge of our country right now don’t give a crap about healing.
Trump put pressure on Ukrainian politicians to go after Hunter Biden in 2018. And I remember pretty clearly that the apologists all denied it at first, and then when it was clear that it happened, they were like what’s the big deal.
So there’s no cause-and-effect with him. The hackery of Trump apologists is like Trump’s brain. There’s no logical connection between his actions and the action of others. It’s all venom and bullshit you leak to the press via your terrible lawyers. I guess guys like Thiessen have to make a living, but I don’t get the shamelessness down the line, unless it relates to how humiliating it must be to know people who voted for Trump, and somehow being a hack for free and thinking that Trump has been wronged in any way is a way of making the humiliation of knowing Trump voters less wounding.
From the Post piece:
Trump didn’t defeat “lawfare.” James Comer did. Comer’s impeachment inquiries proved it isn’t really feasible to weaponize the justice system to go after the political opposition if they haven’t actually, you know, broken laws.
I must admit, I am actually surprised that he’s going to get away with all of it. I thought, in the immediate aftermath of January 6, that there must be at least one thing that will stick.
I was wrong, of course, as we see nearly four years later. He will never be held to account, he will never suffer any consequence.
Americans like to say “no man is above the law.” What fatuous bullshit! It’s obvious Trump is entirely above the law, and will eventually pass on, a free man, and old enough to prove even the Universe won’t exact any penalty for his manifest crimes.
This is a pretty good summation of the matter:
http://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/11/donald-trump-legal-cases-charges/675531/
Yes because a pardon would definitely teach the Republicans to avoid weaponizing the justice system. SMH. This is the journalistic quality that got us here in the first place.
Although I’m sure it is generating a lot of clicks, so what do I know?
1) policy be damned. If we are going to have a lawless presidency, let it start with firing the prosecutors.
2) Are we sure that a plurality voted to not hold Trump accountable? Some of his voters might have been voting for the whole spectacle. One of my brothers did, for instance. A few more might have really wanted JD Vance figuring Trump would be in jail. With his tiny lead over Harris, I don’t think we can safely say what a plurality voted for. Voters vote for weird stuff.
We can still hope for the report he has to file with the AG for each case. Frankly, without closing the cases, I am not sure he would have a basis to produce the reports.
Charlie Sykes nailed it:
@Steven L. Taylor:
@Scott:
The next time I see a conservative say they’re willing to concede X in the name of unity will be the first time.
@Kingdaddy: At this point Smith has little choice. I just wish he’d had an eighteen month earlier start. Appointing Merrick (Milquetoast) Garland was Biden’s biggest mistake. Not being seen as partisan, which didn’t work, seemed more important than protecting the country. WWEHHD? What would Eric Holder have done?
@gVOR10: I might be wrong, but I remember people here cheering Garland’s appointment as some sort of “in yo’ face” to Republicans at the time.
I won’t have time to write on this today so here are my luke warm takes:
1. Contra @gVOR10’s point, while I agree it would have been better for Smith to have been appointed almost immediately, I am unconvinced that it would have changed the outcome at all. The reality is that these sorts of complex prosecutions take a LOT of time in our system and can easily be slowed to a crawl by a competent legal team (or a Judge who is particularly sympathetic to the Defense). Doubly so when the topic of Presidential powers gets involved.
Getting elected was always Trump’s “get-out-of-trial-free” card–given the DoJ’s standard policy that it cannot prosecute a sitting President.
2. Yes, this is a huge blow to the rule of law. And a reminder of why those of us doing work on systems change refer to it as “the criminal legal system” versus “the criminal justice system.” The legal structures here prevented justice from being done (so much a justice would have been a hearing of facts in front of a jury of one’s peers).
3. This is pretty much what everyone assumed would happen. A few of points as to why:
a. As mentioned above, DoJ policy states that you cannot prosecute a sitting president.
b. While this may feel like “don’t comply ahead of time” there are a lot of terrible rulings that could come out of this process that could have future implications (in some ways it might have been better *not* to have to go forward with that wide-ranging and not particularly specific USSC decision on Presidential Immunity) and so choosing to drop now prevents those from happening.
c. While there is probably no chance of this prosecution being picked up in the future due to the statute of limitations, it gets the charges dismissed without prejudice, meaning that a future prosecution is theoretically possible (especially if they can advance a convincing argument around tolling–time tracking).
d. Perhaps most importantly, this allows the Smith team to release their report on the prosecution under the Biden administration versus having it quashed under AG Bondi (assuming that she will be approved, and barring major new scandal, I expect she will).
I don’t endorse forgiveness where there is no repentance.
In the case of an abused spouse, often the abuser says, “I’m sorry, it will never happen again”, they are forgiven, and then they do it again.
This is still better than forgiving an unrepentant wrongdoer.
@just nutha: You may be right, I’m not going to research it. If so, it’s a case of live and learn.
The Trump DOJ re-indicts the DC case…
And then moves to dismiss with prejudice.
…until case is assigned to Obama/Biden DOJ rubber stamp Judge Emmet Sullivan.
@gVOR10:
Rule of Law. Cops and Order. Immunity for the Law Enforcement caste. Justice Matters.
I want AG Bondi to release the classified ATF Fast and Furious, Tea Party targeting of Tea party groups and Crossfire Hurricane documents.
@Matt Bernius:
I agree. But I’m also reminded of the Columbia clusterfu*k. NASA did not entirely ignore the possibility the orbiter’s heat shield had taken damage, but they did not pursue an active course of action to safeguard the orbiter and crew.
Now, space is complicated as well as being hard. Columbia as configured could not have reached the ISS. There was probably no way to get another shuttle ready in time, though Columbia was on a 15 day mission and might have stretched their oxygen supply a few more days. There were other options, which I won’t go into here.
The point is NASA didn’t try. They may have considered all options, even those with little to no chance of working, but they didn’t implement any. It’s possible nothing might have worked, and after all attempts, the crew would either have to die in space or attempt reentry.
But if that had been the case, then at least NASA would have done everything possible and failed. Not merely considered everything possible and failed.
So, maybe things would have turned out the same had Garland set up a special counsel on day one. But then at least he’d have done everything he could possibly do. It’s what drives NFL teams to try onside kicks, and risky plays in the last two minutes of play. The serenity that comes from doing all your best before conceding defeat.
@Matt Bernius:
I don’t disagree. But it sure seems like Garland can only say to himself we gave it our routine bureaucratic shot and it didn’t work, not our best shot. For me it falls under the same heading as some discussion of Harris and Biden’s gracious acceptance of Trump’s election. If we really believe Trump is a threat to democracy, let’s act like it.
Yes, they can release the report before Inauguration Day. I will be pleasantly surprised if they actually do, and not heavily redacted.
ETA – What Kathy said.
@Kingdaddy:
A few points on assigning blame for the Operating System Failure to Hold Trump legally accountable for his innumerable Federal Crimes:
(1) 0% … Clearly, Smith gets zero blame in this. See below.
(2) 70% … Merrick Garland gets a LOT of blame. He was afraid of Trump and the firestorm that would surely follow if he went after Trump, so in November 2022 he appointed Jack Smith, leaving very little time given the expected constant tactics of delay.
(3) 1o% … Aileen Cannon gave Trump all the delay and legal cover he needed to get to this point.
(4) 10% … Chief Justice John Robert, decided to ignore The Constitution and ruled that although his opinon was not intended to mean that a President is above the law, in this case Trump was above the law because what he did was arguably an ‘official act’ and he sent it back to the lower court and to have it tell us rovide more completely unneccesary analysis about, you know, why committing a federal crime is not an official act and therefore prosecutable. Disgraceful. By this point the clock had basically run out.
(5) 10% … 76 million voters, who decided that after seeing his act the first time, inciting a riot to attempt to steal the 202o election, seeing his act on the campaign trail, seeing him refuse to return classified documents, seeing him convicted of serious crimes … decided to bring him back for another refreshing swim in the Trump cesspool.
@gVOR10:
Smith Report already released just before the election.
Special counsel Jack Smith provides fullest picture yet of his 2020 election case against Trump in new filing.
They do not count the time during the Covid pandemic when the US Constitution was suspended under Jacobson v. Mass.
After all the clickbait “Save our democracy”, ironically, democracy is causing these actions. Democrats are trying to untangle themselves from all this as they feel the hot breath of The People, the on their necks. You may say a plurality, but what they fear is the unknown number of voters that will move to vote Trump/Republican either after reflexively voting Democrat this round or who step up to vote.
We shall see in the midterms, but also in any state/local elections in Dem “strongholds” in 2025/26.
Should be noted, that being for the Constitution, the American flag and the America, itself, was seen as Trump/Republican in 2024 and the 2026 midterms will come just after the Semiquincentennial and the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in the summer of 2026. Democrats may want to get an early start to becoming associated with patriotism again.
@JKGirl:
But Justice Matters. Convicted Felon and Adjudicated Rapist Insurrectionist!
@JKGirl: “near-total repudiation?”
Innumeracy much? I get being fatigued with the carping about trials that were destined to not close before the clock ran out. I even get being amused at a political scientist not being able to fathom the notion that the founders created a system that would shelter misdeeds by those in power through an internal policing system. But there was nothing even close to “total repudiation” about this election.
And there aren’t any good or bad guys in this story. Only people disagreeing about what’s stupid and hurtful to their neighborhood and neighbors. But who cares about what happens to the neighbors, amirite?
@just nutha:
Trump didn’t even get 50% of the votes. Pretty hard to claim “total repudiation” when you can’t even get half the people to vote for you.
@Paul L.: I would support the release of these reports. Except Bondi will greatly censor any negative info about Trump. Especially Crossfire Hurricane.
@JKB:
I’m a bit amused by this paragraph, given the modern Republican Party wholeheartedly supports what the Declaration of Independence was written to express rebellion against, and what America was created to separate from: autocratic rule by one man who sits entirely above the law.
If Trump allocutes and begs the American people to forgive him maybe he should get the pardon. He would have to include details of the crime and any people involved in the crime. He would have to do that prior to any pardon, and it would have to be on national television. And he would have to be kneeling the entire time.
@Joe:
I doubt it will tell us anything we don’t already know, and a huge chunk of America won’t believe it anyway.
@al Ameda: ok, there can be no world in which the person who tried, ineffectively, to do the right thing deserves more blame than the people who deliberately tried to delay it into oblivion.
You’re also assuming that there wasn’t a lot going on before Smith was appointed. Given how quickly Smith started moving, I think a fair bit of the groundwork was done by then.
And you also have the DoJ trying to not step on the House Jan6th committee.
In retrospect, I wish the House committee was run as a Truth and Reconciliation thing, handing out immunity like candy to get everything on the record and on video. DoJ could be a stick to prod people along.
(They may have had to ponder what to do when Matt Gaetz showed up and started confessing all his unrelated drug use and sex crimes in an effort to get immunity for those)
@Mikey: I’m not convinced that a bunch of wealthy land owners who ran forced labor camps and didn’t want poor people, women or brown people to vote would really object to the current Republican Party. The Declaration of Independence was propaganda, and should be read as such.
There is a hell of a lot of myth making around the founding fathers.
Oh, sure, they were products of their time, but there were a lot of abolitionists in that time. They didn’t add a prohibition on congress addressing the issue of slavery until 1808(?) for funsies. There’s no constitutional provision restricting Congress from banning the color blue or bestiality, for instance.
The Patriots were shitheads. They didn’t want to overthrow an aristocracy, they wanted to be the aristocracy when they felt it slipping.
Ben Franklin wrote of how he had really knew he had succeeded in life after he was able to afford a slave. And he was one of the better ones.
England banned most slavery in their empire in 1833. Didn’t have a whole lot of wars about it either.
Fuck the Patriots.
Even if we judge them by the values of their times, they were complete assholes. And the values of their times were not great.
——
FYI: Tad Stoermer, a historian at John Hopkins, has a lot of videos on the subject of the Patriots being “bastard covered bastards with bastard filling” as part of his apparent effort to atone for being the historical director at Colonial Williamsburg. Good times.
Also, apparently his name is really Taylor Gentry Stoermer, which I just find hysterical. It’s like someone having the name Baker because some ancestor was a baker, but with Gentry, because the ancestors were Gentry. (I assume Gentry is a family name, either mothers maiden name, or some previous woman’s family name that has been passed down)
@JKB: Have you read the evidence against Trump? Is it your position that it’s all fake news? Have you observed what he did on 1/6/2021? Did you see how he celebrated that?
Politics beats law. We only have rule of law if we are willing to stick to it even when it is inconvenient for us politically. This isn’t the first time that the United States has failed to meet that challenge. It goes back at least as far as Andrew Jackson. Perhaps back to John Adams and the Alien and Sedition Acts.
Way too many people are eager to toss aside rule of law when it’s inconvenient for them. In point of fact that is what the demonstrations on 1/6 were about – they had lost under the law, so now those protesters were going to go in to Congress and scare people into doing what they wanted.
It didn’t work, but they could well try it again. That’s the stakes. I haven’t changed my mind about that, just my tactics.
@Gustopher:
That’s Orwell’s thesis in 1984. Although its expounded by O’Brien at the Ministry of Love (aka torture dungeon), I believe it to be essentially correct.
It’s also a recurring theme in Mike Duncan’s Revolutions podcast.
Orwell was perhaps too rigid. Often the middle wants a say in politics, and they wind up replacing those on top when most of the fighting is done. And if they can hold on against those who know have learned how to overthrow the top. That’s the essence of the Mexican Revolution (aka civil war) between 1910-1921. Madero overthrows Diaz, Huerta overthrows Madero, and so on until Obregon overthrows Carranza.
@JKB:
Two thoughts.
1. The entangling is because by practice we don’t try Presidents in court. I think you know this.
2. Your sentence sounds all too much like someone comfortable with the authoritarian turn of their party.
@Lucysfootball: Trump isn’t interested in being pardoned by a court or anyone else for that matter. Talking about the conditions under which Trump should be pardoned is ridiculous.
@Steven L. Taylor: Not to mention that “the hot breath of the people” is used to describe an election where the winner won the popular vote, and the vote in swing states by a couple of points at best, and didn’t quite make it to 50 percent of the overall vote.
C’mon, Andrew Jackson did a lot better than that.
The fact that there is no rule of law in America at this point has persuaded this anti-gun liberal to purchase a handgun. I am anticipating a LOT of people in my city experiencing “nothing to lose”.
I honestly didn’t see this coming.