For all the foofaraw over our predominant focus on Trump — his indictments, his stalling, and the timing of his trials –I’ve just noticed with great pleasure how righteous and precise the trial calendar is, because Trump has been on trial — and has lost each one so far — more or less in the chronological order of his bad acts, although there’s a considerable amount of overlap given Trump’s propensity to do bad things whenever he has a moment.
In fact, this past week, when my associate cousin Nancy and I had lunch and I was cheerfully relating my discovery by naming all the trials, she said, “Georgia!” OMG, I’d forgotten Georgia! I hope Fani Willis will forgive me; I’ve slotted her in below, when I estimate that trial could take place.
1) Sexual assault and defamation, 199o’s and 2020’s. In the mid-1990‘s, E. Jean Carroll was sexually assaulted by Trump in a department store dressing room. After she revealed the assault in a 2019 book, Trump defamed her. She sued him, twice. Trump lost, twice: first, for $5 million; then for $83.3 million.
2) Tax fraud, a/k/a “greed and cheating”: The Trump Org was found guilty on December 6, 2022 for a variety of manipulations to avoid paying taxes. Among a few other punishments, the Trump Org will be fined around $1.6 million. Trump loyal employee Allen Weisselberg, one beneficiary of the tax cheating, went to Rikers for the first time. (Last week, he went to Rikers for the second time. Still loyal, still lying.)
This trial should have come after the big fraud trial but imperfections exist in any scheduling, even Mother Nature’s.
3) Fraud(s) starting in July 2014. Although Trump has been committing acts of fraud probably since his birth, the starting date of July 2014 was agreed to for investigating his finagling of financial statements. In 2022 Tish James filed the civil suit; in October 2023 the trial began; on February 16, 2024 the decision against Trump came out: $355 million, plus rolling interest.
4) Election interference, etc., October 2016. On Monday, Trump will be on trial in Manhattan Criminal Court for paying off Stormy Daniels and others (yeah, there are others) to bury sex scandals before the presidential election.
On April 25, the Supreme Court will hear arguments regarding Trump’s claim of absolute immunity from prosecution. The New York trial will still be going on. I’m thinking a SCOTUS decision (against Trump) should be fairly imminent. Which means…
5) Sedition, etc., January 6, 2021 trial should rev up in D.C. and slip neatly into the opening after the NY trial concludes, say around June 2024, although the time line really calls for the next trial to be the 6) Georgia election interference trial, prompted by Trump’s January 2, 2021 phone call to Brad Raffensberger.
And, optimist that I am, the 7) classified documents case — which I’ve read is virtually ready to go now, pending how Jack Smith decides to deal with Judge Cannon — could fit itself at the end of the vast Trump criminal calendar, just before the election. Appropriately, since Trump stole the documents in the weeks before he left the White House in the morning of January 20, 2021.