IN WASHINGTON DC – Unless the week witnesses some truly dramatic developments, Donald Trump will – next Monday – be making history all over again in New York City.
Barring a legal ruling in his favour, he will become the first sitting or former President ever to take the dock in a criminal trial. The action is due to play out for at least six weeks in a New York city courtroom, where Trump faces charges relating to the hush money payments made to the porn star Stormy Daniels in the dying days of the 2016 election campaign. America’s television networks are already staking claims to their camera positions outside the courthouse.
The vehemence with which Trump’s lawyers are trying to delay his date with judicial destiny is in stark contrast to the severity of the case against him. Most legal analysts view the hush money case as the runt of the litter of criminal cases that he is facing. Even if convicted, the former President – a first time offender – risks minimal likelihood of a custodial sentence. But Trump is playing the case up for all it is worth, and for every reason in the book.
On Friday, we learned that his attorneys had filed a fresh effort to get Judge Juan Merchan barred from the case, after the judge threw out their first attempt earlier in the week. Trump maintains that he cannot get a fair trial because of the bias he claims the judge’s daughter has exhibited towards him. Loren Merchan has served as the president of Authentic Campaigns, a company that provides digital campaign services to a variety of Democratic Party candidates. Many of them are some of the former President’s fiercest critics.
Whether she still serves in that role is unclear (all references to her have been excised from the company’s website), although in a ruling last August the judge indicated that she was still employed by the company at that time. In their latest filing, Trump’s lawyers claim that his success in Republican primary contests as recently as last week “has cemented his status as a political target of Authentic, Ms Merchan, and their clients”.
Ms Merchan’s father is no more likely to be moved by that argument than he was by previous efforts to question his capacity to be impartial despite his daughter’s political viewpoints. New York’s Committee on Judicial Ethics says “the judge’s impartiality cannot reasonably be questioned” based on his daughter’s business activities or political viewpoints. Trump has already sparked a gag order against him, for his continuing efforts to target members of the judge’s family.
So why are Trump’s attorneys pursuing the argument all over again?
First, because his legal strategy in all matters always entails throwing as much chaff into the air as possible in continuing – and, so far, largely successful – efforts to delay the criminal cases against him. But if that doesn’t work, and Trump must spend the next month-and-a-half in a New York courtroom instead of being on the campaign trail, he wants to continue creating the impression that he is the victim of prosecutorial persecution, or, as his supporters call it, “lawfare”.
He aims to blunt the impact of any conviction in Judge Merchan’s court, and also to build the case that the Democratic Party establishment is conniving to derail his bid to return to the Oval Office. Trump continues to maintain that the Justice Department, headed by Attorney General Merrick Garland, a Biden appointee, is itself engaged in election interference by pursuing criminal cases against him.
In fact, Garland has nothing to do with the hush money case in New York, nor with the separate and beleaguered case alleging election interference in Georgia. They are local in nature, and Trump would not have the power to pardon himself of convictions in either jurisdiction were he re-elected to the presidency.
The two federal cases that Trump faces – over his efforts to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election, and his alleged mishandling of classified documents – are indeed charges brought by an independent special prosecutor working for the Attorney General, and Trump may be able to pardon himself in the unlikely event that either of them gets to court before November’s election.
In federal court in Florida last week, Special Prosecutor Jack Smith was engaged in urgent efforts to bring Trump to book in the classified documents case. While Judge Eileen Cannon (a Trump appointee) rejected the former President’s efforts to dismiss the case against him, she also criticised Smith for making “unprecedented and unjust” requests in a related discussion about the instructions that may eventually be handed to a jury.
There is speculation that after months of frustration, Smith may even seek to have Cannon removed from the case. Trump would relish that decision, because it will not only delay matters further, but also provide him with fresh grist for his persecution complex, as he continues trying to make lemonade out of the legal lemons that he’s facing.