Columnist
President Donald Trump’s victory in the Supreme Court 14th Amendment case, together with delay and disorder in the criminal cases against him, has set off panic among Democrats who hoped to use …
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President Donald Trump’s victory in the Supreme Court 14th Amendment case, together with delay and disorder in the criminal cases against him, has set off panic among Democrats who hoped to use prosecutions and other legal maneuvers to keep Trump from winning a second term. “Supreme Court ruling darkens critics’ hopes for a judicial curb on Trump,” read one headline in the Washington Post.
You might find it outrageous that people in positions of great power and responsibility, in the midst of a campaign, would use the justice system to “curb” one of the two major presidential candidates. You might find it outrageous that those people — a coalition of elected Democrats, Biden administration appointees, Democratic Party activists and career lawfare specialists — are in fact desperately pushing the system to work faster to win verdicts by Election Day. But there it is.
The anti-Trump coalition has launched six main attacks on Trump. Attack No. 1 is the federal indictment, brought by the Justice Department-appointed special counsel Jack Smith, charging Trump with 40 felony counts in the classified documents case. No. 2 is the federal indictment, also brought by Smith, charging Trump with four felonies in the 2020 election and Jan. 6 case. No. 3 is the sprawling, 13-felony count racketeering indictment, based on the 2020 election, brought against Trump and 18 co-defendants in Georgia by the elected Democratic Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.
Attack No. 4 is the 34-felony-count indictment, based on the payment of hush money in the 2016 election, brought by the elected Democratic Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. No. 5 is the effort, launched by various activists around the country, to remove Trump from presidential ballots by declaring him an “insurrectionist” under the terms of Section Three of the 14th Amendment. And No. 6 is the effort to bankrupt Trump by way of a lawsuit brought by the elected Democratic New York State Attorney General Letitia James.
Now, with their efforts in the news daily, it might be a good time to see where things stand. Go through them in reverse order of importance, that is, starting with the cases least likely to hurt Trump this year:
The reason for the Democratic panic is this: Some in the party think, “Sure, President Joe Biden is weak, and his polls are terrible, but if he falters, there is always lawfare. We’ve thrown case after case against Trump. Surely one of them will work.” Now, there has been a lot of movement with the big six cases. Five of them might not be resolved, or resolved in Biden’s favor, before the election. So it could be that the entire hopes of the Democratic Party and all those who seek to bring down Trump before Election Day rest with Bragg.