'The best luck': How Trump repeatedly dodges 'accountability'

29 April 2024

Although Donald Trump's hush money/falsifying business records trial is now moving along at a rapid pace, the fate of the other three criminal indictments he is facing hangs in the balance.

It appears unlikely that either of special counsel Jack Smith's federal cases against Trump will go to trial before the 2024 presidential election in November. Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, has repeatedly delayed Smith's Mar-a-Lago documents case — and the U.S. Supreme Court is holding up Smith's election interference case.

The U.S. Supreme Court, on April 25, heard opposing arguments in Trump's presidential immunity lawsuit. Trump is claiming that because he was still president in late 2020 and early 2021, he enjoys absolute immunity from prosecution in Smith's election interference case.

READ MORE:Is SCOTUS in on the coup?

In an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on April 29, journalist A.B. Stoddard laments that Trump continues to dodge "accountability" — thanks in part to the High Court.

"Last week proved the U.S. Supreme Court was always going to find a way to help Donald Trump's reelection campaign," Stoddard argues. "Though that may not be their intention, conservative justices in the majority seem set to do the opposite of helping to bring justice or accountability to Trump before Election Day. Because that would be perceived as helping President Joe Biden's campaign."

Stoddard continues, "The High Court had already effectively killed off the prospects of a timely trial for Trump's attempts to steal the 2020 election, by taking up the immunity issue at all and then waiting eight weeks for oral argument. It is now possibly poised to enable presidents to skirt some laws, and to expand presidential power — because Trump staged a two-month coup that, once unsuccessful, transitioned to a deadly insurrection he encouraged and cheered."

The journalist goes to on stress that Trump, time and time again, has "the best luck."

"Flukes, twists of fate, cowardice, and interventions along the way have dramatically smoothed his path through the legal peril he unleashed with 88 alleged crimes," Stoddard writes. "Go back three years to February 13, 2021 when Republican senators refused to convict Trump — in an impeachment trial GOP leader Mitch McConnell delayed until after Trump left office — on the grounds that he was no longer president and so couldn't be impeached and would have to be criminally prosecuted instead. If you're Trump, you get to evade impeachment because you can be criminally prosecuted but then evade criminal prosecution because you were impeached without conviction."

Stoddard notes that in the "closest to airtight case against him" — the Mar-a-Lago documents case — Trump enjoyed the "luck of the draw" when it was assigned to Cannon.

"Next, Fani Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, Georgia prosecuting the subversion of the Peach State's 2020 election, brought an unwieldy case against 19 defendants that would have been challenging under any circumstances — but then, she became lovers with one of her handpicked lawyers on the team, and the whole circus sideshow eroded her credibility and slowed that case, too," Stoddard explains. "Republicans from Colorado sued to keep Trump off the state's ballot under the third section of the 14th Amendment, which bars insurrectionists from holding office."

Stoddard adds, "The (Colorado) State Supreme Court agreed, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Trump couldn't be removed from the ballot."

A.B. Stoddard's full article for The Bulwark is available at this link.

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