The main question in Donald Trump’s classified documents trial — in any trial he faces, really — is when it will happen. Trump’s pending legal argument in Florida suggests his desired answer to that question is: Never.
But Rep. Jamie Raskin just pointed out why the former president shouldn’t be able to avoid trial just because he’s running again in 2024.
“Otherwise,” the Maryland Democrat told MSNBC’s Jen Psaki on Sunday, “any criminal defendant in the country would declare for president or Senate or House or mayor and say, ‘You can’t prosecute me anymore. You gotta wait ’til next year or the year after.’”
The former manager in Trump’s second impeachment continued: “If somebody is running for office and then is implicated in a murder or a rape or an armed robbery, would we say, ‘No, we’re going to hold that until after the election,’ if in the normal course of events it would take place before? He should be treated exactly the way anybody else would be treated in the same situation.”
“Why should he be special?” Raskin said of the GOP’s presidential front-runner.
“I certainly believe that he’s trying to use his candidacy and his campaign as a shield against legal prosecution.”@RepRaskin on Trump’s request to delay classified documents trial. pic.twitter.com/kJO6LAjP1q It’s that status as a presidential candidate that Trump hopes will buy him time — a lot of time — with Judge Aileen Cannon. The Trump-nominated trial judge, who was smacked down by an appeals court for treating Trump special as a former president in a civil lawsuit he filed after Mar-a-Lago was searched, is considering when to set his trial on Espionage Act and other felony charges. Special counsel Jack Smith wants to start in December. Trump seemingly doesn’t want to start at all — or at least not before the 2024 election, whose outcome could lead to the case vanishing if he or another Republican wins. We should soon learn whether Cannon still thinks Trump is special.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
Latest Post
Recommended
