Monday was a day of highs and lows for Donald Trump. Things started with a bang after an appellate court slashed the required bond in his New York-based civil case from $454 million to $175 million, ensuring an appeal will now take place. They ended with a whimper when the judge handling Trump's New York-based criminal case rejected further delay attempts and set an April 15th trial date.
Trump Responds to April 15th Criminal Trial Date, Slams Joe Biden
It was a jolt back to reality for Republicans who were hoping the various prosecutions targeting the presumptive GOP nominee would fade away until after November. Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg will get to test his ridiculous legal theory of upgrading misdemeanors to felonies, and he'll get to test it in an area with a jury pool that is overwhelmingly left-wing.
That's led to a mountain of speculation about how a criminal conviction of Trump would play in the minds of voters. Would it represent a red line for too many, sending him into a spiral toward defeat? Or would it further rally support around him given the preposterous nature of the prosecution?
But there's one question no one seems to be asking: What happens if he's acquitted?
Admittedly, it's hard to imagine how a trial held in one of the most far-left parts of the country could end in anything but a conviction of Trump. No one hates the former president more than the types of people who populate Manhattan. It's easy to assume the facts won't matter and that a negative outcome is assured.
Perhaps that's true, but what if it's not? It only takes one juror to blow up any possible conviction of Trump, and Bragg's case is objectively ludicrous. It relies on the notion that state prosecutors can make felonies of misdemeanors as a way to punish alleged federal crimes that even the DOJ rejected as valid. That is one of the dumbest and most abusive legal theories to ever grace an indictment. What if one or more jurors simply don't buy it? It's at least possible, right?
The repercussions of an acquittal are hard to overstate for Democrats. Lawfare is their plan to defeat Trump, and if he manages to secure victory over their first attempt (and possibly the only one that happens before election day), it could take him from a tight polling lead in March to an electoral college blowout in November. That's the risk Democrats took in pursuing this third-world, banana republic-esque strategy.
Which brings me to another inquiry: Did Bragg want this to go to trial before the election?
There's reason to believe he didn't. Throughout this process, he's shown deference to the federal charges Trump is facing, all but signaling he didn't want to be the first in the ring. After all, out of the four criminal indictments of the former president, Bragg's is the weakest and most likely to fail. His entire political future is now riding on a conviction, and if he doesn't get it, he'll not only blow himself up, but he could take the entire Democratic Party with him regarding the 2024 election.
For Trump, all he can do is plow forward, and perhaps not even he has contemplated what an acquittal would look like, but there's ample reason to believe it could represent the nail in the coffin for Joe Biden (politically speaking, of course). Democrats are playing with fire, and sometimes people who play with fire get burned. It's not out of the realm of possibility.