Prosecutors wanted a December 2023 start date. They admitted that this date was “aggressive”.
Trump wanted to push the start date until after the election (so that he could appoint an attorney general that would dismiss the case).
The very pro-Trumo judge set the trial date for May 2024. I guess the national spotlight and her previous wrist slap from the higher court compelled her to not make the worst possible decision today.
This has made me realize that the presidential election is not this November. I’m already exhausted.
I dunno. If you can allow yourself to forget that we’re riding a razor edge, where the future of our democracy, secular society, and the livability of the planet are at stake, the election news is really quite entertaining.
Gallows humor. Exactly how I feel. Either terrified or hysterical.
Thanks for the little chuckle in between endless existential dread.
Ok chuckle times over back to the dread.
May is after all of 2024’s primary races, so this date ensures that GOP voters won’t know the outcome and won’t even have to think about the trial. IMO, this is about the most pro-Trump decision she could have made.
Let’s be honest: GOP primary voters do not care about the outcome of this trial.
Nine months!?
Well that’s good because I think we all know once that time runs out Trump’s attorneys will be ready to go, and won’t even think of trying to stall even more. Right?
I think the hope is new people will have passed the bar exam in Florida so he’ll be able to get a lawyer.
Trump will just fire his lawyers weeks before the trial and demand a delay to find new ones. Rinse and repeat.
I think this lines up with the primary schedule so that should make this an interesting affair.
All the better to claim the DOJ is interfering with elections. Ug. I just threw up a little in my mouth.
That was out of the bottle since 2016
Kinda right smack-dab in the middle. Perfect set up to allow a convicted felon to be a major party nominee
The primary will almost certainly be de facto decided by the end of March. There’s a good chance it will be de facto over by mid February, if any candidate dominates the early states.
Of the 2467 delegates up, 1250 of them will have been distributed by March 12. Republicans rules on delegate distribution heavily favor the candidate in the lead as well. No primaries/caucuses have been scheduled yet after March 12, but expect the bulk of the remainder to be in the other half of March and all of April.
The primary is all but certain to be over by May 2024.
And I’m sure they’re all banking on Trump to win so they can pull the “you can’t run a major court trial with a presidential nominee as the defendant” card.
Trump could clench the nomination in March, then get disqualified from running in May. The GOP will have to slap together a quick Desantis, Pence, or Cruz campaign with zero cash, while Trump fights the disqualification in the appellate courts.
How would he be disqualified? A candidate could run a campaign from prison if he or she wanted to.
An interesting thought, and completely unrelated to the May trial, but it’s possible that the upcoming J6 indictment could include certain conspiracy charges that would prohibit holding office if convicted. I think the timing of that trial will be more important.
Possible but unlikely. I really hope so though or why do we even have the laws?
It’s worse: If Trump is the nominee you just know he’s going to spend all the campaign dollars on lawyers for his various trials. He’ll do his usual tour of the states doing his rallies but exactly zero dollars will make their way to downstream candidates. He’s going to cost them the presidency, the house, and the senate.
At least I hope so.
Oh no, won’t anyone think of the poor fasc-err… republicans!
He wouldn’t be disqualified from running. He can run from prison if he wanted to. (Barf)
