Donald Trump’s Long Road Of Legal Troubles May End Here

Donald Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts in New York gave way to a stark reality: The former president’s pre-election odyssey through the criminal justice system may have come to an end.

Though there are still three criminal cases pending in Washington, D.C., Florida and Georgia, Trump is poised to face voters before he comes close to any trial on the graver charges prosecutors leveled in those cases.

And if he wins in November, he may never face those other cases at all.

That dynamic began to dawn the instant the word “guilty” was rattled off in court on charges that Trump falsified business records to hide his efforts to prevent porn star Stormy Daniels from disclosing their alleged affair. The charges carry a potential jail sentence, but Trump is sure to ask for no prison time and to remain free while he appeals the case to New York’s higher courts.

If his appeal succeeds, it means Trump is unlikely to face criminal consequences before the 2024 election. And he could use a victory at the polls to stave off those potential consequences for years — if not forever.

The New York result is a vindication of sorts for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who once seemed unlikely to charge Trump at all and later seemed likely to postpone his case to make room for the federal ones brought by special counsel Jack Smith.

Yet Smith’s two cases both seem unlikely to advance before November. If Trump is elected, they’re all but certain to unravel entirely. In one, Trump is charged with seeking to disenfranchise millions of voters in order to seize power in 2020 despite losing reelection. In the other, Trump is charged with stashing some of the nation’s most sensitive military secrets in his Mar-a-Lago estate after leaving the White House and then seeking to obstruct the government from reclaiming them.

In both cases, judges appointed by Trump himself are in positions to issue decisive rulings that could shield him from further prosecutions before Election Day. The Supreme Court is currently considering whether Trump is immune from the 2020 election charges he faces in Washington, D.C., and Trump’s three appointees to the high court seem likely to rule in his favor — or at least rule in a way that makes a 2024 trial impossible.

In Florida, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, another Trump appointee, indefinitely postponed a May 20 trial date in the classified docs case and has allowed a backlog of complex issues to clog the docket.

In Georgia, state prosecutors also charged Trump over the 2020 election, claiming that he orchestrated a racketeering conspiracy to corrupt the state’s election results as part of his national scheme to stay in power. That case, which prosecutors initially attempted to put on in March, is now indefinitely postponed as a Georgia appeals court considers whether to disqualify lead prosecutor Fani Willis. The judge in the case, Scott McAfee, has yet to set a trial date.