Although there is still time to know the verdict of the criminal trial for his alleged electoral interference in the Georgia elections in 2020, Donald Trump can say that he has already won what is most valuable to him in this pre-election moment: time.
This order will prevent the judge from moving forward with pretrial motions, as planned, until the appeal is resolved.
And if it was already anticipated that it was unlikely that this case would reach trial before the November presidential elections, in which Trump is the virtual candidate for the Republican Party, This makes it practically a fact.
Far from being something isolated, Trump is using the strategy of buying time through appeals to try to delay all his pending trials – four of them, in the criminal field – until after the elections.
And if he achieves this, and if he wins the November elections, he could face these processes with the power and faculties that being president again would give him. In the two federal processes, this is not the case in Georgia, it could even be self-pardoned.
Even when his appeals are not successful, the time it takes to resolve each of them is bringing the former president closer to his goal of reaching November 5 and avoid having sat on the bench.
What are the criminal proceedings that Trump seeks to delay?
The only one of his cases in which the trial managed to begin is the one held in New York for making payments in 2016 to the former porn actress Stormy Daniels in exchange for her silence about a relationship between the two.
But even in this case, Trump gained three weeks of time arguing that thousands of pages of documents had been submitted as part of the process.
However, your legal team has 30 days to file a notice of appeal, and up to six months to submit the full appeal.
Experts believe that the judge, who is scheduled to announce his sentence on July 11, could agree to suspend the sentence pending his appeal, which would undoubtedly prolong the process well beyond the elections.
This case tried in New York, like the one of alleged electoral interference in Georgia, are of a state nature. But the other two criminal proceedings that Trump faces Yes, they are federal.
In one of them, also for alleged electoral interference, he is accused in Washington DC of several crimes for his attempts to reverse the results of the 2020 elections and having instigated the assault on the Capitol shortly thereafter.
The trial was due to begin in March, but his legal team got the Supreme Court to delay the date indefinitely while it examines whether or not Trump has criminal immunity, since he has alleged that he was then acting in his capacity as president.
The decision made by the high court will not only affect that process, but also the federal litigation that the former president has in Florida for refusing to return the classified documents that he took from the White House after leaving office.
In March, prosecutors in this case asked the judge to reject without the possibility of appeal Trump’s request to cancel his prosecution, also alleging his supposed presidential immunity to “not encourage such delaying tactics.”
Could Trump as president pardon himself?
In the US, the presidents cannot be criminally prosecuted so as not to violate the separation of powers between the executive and the judiciary, which could be one of the keys to Trump’s desire to delay all his processes until after the elections.
However, there is also another reason why the magnate could be doing everything possible to ensure that his trials do not begin until, if he wins the elections, he returns to the White House: the presidential power of pardon or pardon.
It must be clarified that this power only applies to federal crimes, so he could not forgive himself now that he was found guilty in New York or, if necessary, in Georgia, as both are state crimes.
In the first, it is only the governor of New York who has the ability to pardon serious crimes. It would be unlikely that Kathy Hochul, Democrat currently in office, will thus support Trump.
In the case of Georgia, the pardon power rests with the state Board of Pardons and Paroles, which cannot grant pardons for felony convictions until five years after the full sentence has been served, as confirmed to CNN. Anthony Michael Kreis assistant professor of law at Georgia State University.
Strategies to delay proceedings are “classic tactics for a defendant who does not want to go to trial,” he told AFP. Daniel Richman former federal prosecutor and professor at Columbia University.
“But when it involves a former president, the issues that need to be resolved are not necessarily unprecedented and require greater participation from the courts, or even the Supreme Court,” he criticized.
“So anyone who thinks Trump’s lawyers are some kind of magicians or geniuses, you are wrong”, he concluded.
This is how the guilty verdict against Trump was experienced in the courtroom: “He stared at the judge and said nothing”
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