Sometimes, I think the operation of the world's toughest obstacle course is the primary function of the current federal, state, and local judiciaries. There was DA Alvin Bragg in Manhattan, ready to go to trial in two weeks or so on criminal charges against the former president* in connection with his payoffs to Stormy Daniels. Then, the Department of Justice — Merrick Garland, proprietor — does a last minute document dump on material Bragg asked for a year ago. The former president*'s lawyers ask for a 30-day delay so they can study this material, the fruit of the federal investigation into the hush-money case. Bragg announces that they can have it if they want it. He won't stand in the way.
What the unshirted, bearded hell? Can't anyone here play this game?
From the New York Times:
Mr. Trump, who clinched the Republican presidential nomination for the third time this week, faces four criminal trials and several civil lawsuits. The Manhattan case had been the only one of the four criminal cases not mired in delays. Now it too appears likely to be postponed, though it remains on track to reach trial before Election Day.In a court filing, the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, said his prosecutors were prepared to begin the trial on March 25 as planned, but that they did not oppose a 30-day delay “out of an abundance of caution and to ensure that defendant has sufficient time to review the new materials.”
Dammit, caution is too abundant these days. It's an invasive species in our national life. It's crowding out justice and culpability like the pythons eating all the other animals in the Everglades.
Any delay in the Manhattan case would most likely delight the former president, whose central strategy for fighting his legal entanglements is to stall.
If he were elected to a second term in November, the criminal cases against him would grind to a halt until he was out of office. It is Justice Department policy that a sitting president cannot face trial on criminal charges, and the district attorney’s office is expected to adhere to that.
The hell of it all is that everybody involved in these cases — judges, prosecutors, defense lawyers, and, god knows, the defendant — knows that this is the strategy. They all operate within a dynamic created by the defense out of the simple fact that the defendant is alleged to have committed so many crimes and misdemeanors and actionable offenses that there are dozens of ways to tangle the system up in itself. A new political reality is born — Too Crooked To Jail.
Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has three children.
