Democrats are still celebrating the conviction of Donald Trump in New York, but the rest of their plan to subvert the 2024 election has just hit a major snag. On Monday, the appeals court handling his case in Georgia set oral arguments for October 4th. That was welcome news for the former president because it means the trial will almost certainly not start before voters go to the polls.
The appeal centers on whether Fulton County DA Fani Willis should be disqualified following a series of ethics complaints. That includes the revelation that she paid taxpayer money to Nathan Wade, a man she was having an affair with, to join the prosecution. The two took lavish vacations together, paid for by Wade. There are also allegations that Willis overpaid him.
The Georgia Court of Appeals has set a tentative date of October 4 to hear oral arguments in the effort to have Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis removed from prosecuting the election interference case against former President Donald Trump and others.
The possibility that the disqualification fight could stretch to October, as well as an ongoing question about how the Supreme Court’s upcoming ruling on presidential immunity could impact the prosecution, makes it extremely unlikely Trump will go on trial for election subversion in Georgia before Election Day.
Make no mistake, the Democrat plan was to have all four criminal cases against Trump finished before the election, preferably with guilty verdicts in all of them. Not only does that look virtually impossible at this point, but it seems incredibly unlikely that any of the three remaining cases will go to trial before the votes are tallied.
In Florida, Judge Aileen Cannon has caused the DOJ major headaches, mainly by not allowing prosecutors to run roughshod over the law. Meanwhile, the other federal case against Trump involving the 2020 election is waiting on a Supreme Court decision regarding presidential immunity. That likely won't come until the end of June, likely putting Democrat hopes of trial and verdict on ice until very late in the year.
That means that Democrats are stuck with what they have. Yes, they got their conviction to hold over Trump's head, but it came via an absolute joke of a case that few people seem to care about. There's a reason Bragg did everything he could to not go first.
The situation isn't great for Trump, but it's a heck of a lot better than it could have been. The only big question left is whether Judge Juan Merchan tries to throw the former president in jail on July 11th. I won't even attempt to predict how that will play out.