Should Donald Trump fail a second time to be re-elected he faces the very real possibility of jail time and massive financial penalties due to the sheer volume of criminal cases and civil lawsuits that are on hold until after the election.
That is the opinion of Syracuse University law professor Greg Germain who explained in an interview with Newsweek that the former president’s only path to get out from under the federal cases he now faces is to beat Vice President Kamala Harris in less than two weeks and then push the Department of Justice to drop the cases filed against him.
As Germain stated, the multiple federal cases Trump is facing are solid and his only path to victory may be having them shut down.
Newsweek source: https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-legal-cases-georgia-washington-florida-new-york-stormy-daniels-chutkan-cannon-1974406
I acknowledge that the electoral college misrepresents the popular vote, but that is the mechanism by which the will of your voting public is polled.
That’s not really relevant to my point, which is simply that in a healthy democracy courts need to avoid influencing elections.
Letting guilty insurrectionists run for re-election in clear contravention of the constitution isn’t affecting the election in any way in your view?
If you mean I influence the traffic outside my house by not standing in the middle of the road, then sure the courts are influencing the election.
This is more like you’re a traffic warden and when people park across the middle of a busy intersection, you do nothing and then claim you don’t want to affect the traffic.
If you’re a teacher and you let the kids play on their phones all year, have you influenced the learning?
Inaction is a choice and has consequences.
The purpose of traffic wardens is to direct traffic. The purpose of teachers is to educate children. The purpose of courts does not include influencing elections.
Anyone would agree that courts deferring rulings is not ideal, but it’s better than a situation where courts are influencing elections.
Do you have any other explanation as to why every judge in every court hearing a case against Trump has expressed reluctance to take any action that might undermine the election?
Actually, the purpose of courts is to enforce the law. It’s only of influence in the election because Donald Trump is a 44-time convicted felon and an insurrectionist who is barred from the presidency by the constitution. He brought that all on himself, and didn’t think of the consequences.
This is so tedious.
Please, by all means, continue wishing that you lived in a country where courts are used to subvert democratic processes.
I find it tedious too that the Republican party would pick an insurrectionist and serial bankruptee as their candidate and then get butthurt if the courts do their job, somehow believing that Trump’s electoral desires outweigh the legal process. I bet if it were a Democrat who was up on felony charges you’d be demanding that they be denied bail!
It’s not Trumps electoral desires that outweigh the legal process. The electoral process is the core of democracy, and it can’t be subverted by a public institution.
If the electorate is stupid enough to elect an insurrectionist and serial bankruptee then public institutions including courts must allow them to do so. That’s a fundamental inescapable component of democracy.
Yes a Trump presidency will be a disaster for everyone. Yes Trump deserves to face the consequences of his many crimes. Yes the American public is about to make a terrible mistake.
However, the dirty complex unsolvable problem is that Trump may have enough support to be elected President. The court is not the right tool to address that issue, because the court is empowered albeit indirectly by the electorate.
It natural to want court processes to expose Trump as the fraud he is and cut his chances at a second presidency. It wouldn’t necessarily work out that way though. Courts are regularly used in faux-democracies to empower autocrats. That would be the perception amongst Trump’s base and really, if we’re allowing courts to influence elections then the only thing separating us from “autocrats” is that we think we’re the goodies and they’re the baddies which is obviously a furphy.
The only way to get rid of Trump is at the polls. Beat him in the election, send him to jail, watch him disappear into his worst nightmare of irrelevance.
So your argument is right, but completely not based on our current reality?
I’m struggling to understand what you’re saying.
Yes the electoral college is shit. That’s not a reason to allow courts to manipulate elections.
They’re already doing that through deliberate inaction. Lock his ass up, already.
Do you want to live in a country where courts incarcerate the candidates they don’t like? I’m sure that will work out very well.