前总统唐纳德·特朗普的一年变得更加忙碌。
周二，特朗普在由特别顾问杰克·史密斯起诉四项指控:阴谋欺骗美国政府，阴谋侵犯人民权利，阴谋阻碍官方程序和实际阻碍官方程序。除此之外，在过去的五个月里，特朗普还面临另外两项刑事指控——一项来自曼哈顿地区检察官，另一个来自史密斯的团队，涉及单独的联邦费用。本周的起诉可能不是特朗普法律麻烦的最后一个。在接下来的几周里富尔顿县地方检察官法尼·威利斯(Fani Willis)可能会要求佐治亚州的一个大陪审团在另一项长期调查中提出指控，该调查旨在推翻2020年大选的结果，特朗普可能会成为目标。
所有这些都意味着，到夏天结束时，特朗普可能会在四个不同的法庭上成为四个不同刑事案件的被告。这可能不会阻止他获得共和党提名——事实上第一项指控实际上可能帮助了他。但是，即使这些指控不会损害他在他的基础上的地位，这些指控也可能会通过消耗他的时间和注意力来伤害特朗普。如果他想在竞选总统时避免定罪，他可能需要花很多精力处理这些案件——留给他竞选的带宽更少了。
“积极的客户参与是试验成功的关键，”说C.梅丽莎·欧文他是北卡罗来纳州的一名刑事辩护律师，活跃于全国刑事辩护律师协会。“特朗普是让他的律师了解案件情况，尤其是他的意图的最佳人选。通常情况下，客户参与越多，结果就越好。”
处理四个不同的刑事案件对任何人来说都是一项艰巨的任务，即使他们没有同时试图说服美国公众给他们一个世界上最强大的工作。起初，大部分的来回将发生在公众视线之外:在审判开始之前，检察官将分享信息他们聚集在一起和辩护团队一起，以及双方的律师可能会问法官决定案件将如何发展，包括在某些情况下，是否会被驳回。欧文说，一些客户喜欢比其他人更多地参与这些过程的早期阶段。但是辩护律师需要从他们的委托人那里得到一定程度的信息，她补充说，因为新的信息正在变得可用，他们对这些信息的理解需要与委托人如何看待它相一致。
然后是审判本身——这可能会很长，取决于被传唤的证人数量和提交的证据范围。特朗普作为前总统的身份可能会把扳手扔进这个过程，也是。“单单陪审团的选择就非常复杂，”欧文说。每次审判都可能需要数周时间才能做出判决。在审判进行时，特朗普可能会试图离开法庭——他通常会选择这样做不要出现在民事案件—但是刑事被告是普遍预期在审判的每一天都在场。即使特朗普没有被迫出席，缺席全部或部分审判对他来说也是一个很大的风险。“不在那里看起来真的很糟糕，”欧文说。“这么说吧，这对陪审团来说是一个不好的信号，被告认为他们有更好的地方。”
因此，在竞选的关键时刻，各种法庭诉讼最终可能会占用特朗普几个月的时间。现在，他是第一名计划于3月下旬在纽约接受审判他被指控在2016年竞选期间伪造商业记录，作为对一名成人电影女演员的贿赂计划的一部分。那是超级星期二之后的几个星期——这意味着尽管特朗普届时可能会成为事实上的共和党提名人，但也有可能共和党初选仍将艰难地走向结束。
第二次审判涉及指控特朗普非法保留机密文件并阻挠取回这些文件的努力，目前定于五月。如果最新的起诉书——以及富尔顿县未来的任何起诉书——也是类似的模式，这意味着特朗普可能会在2024年夏天在东海岸的两个不同地方面临额外的审判。
从某些方面来说，这个时机对特朗普来说并不是最糟糕的，因为共和党初选的竞争部分可能会在5月份结束。(如果不是，这个时机将会非常糟糕，因为每个州在最后的初选中都至关重要。)整个夏天的审判不会干扰大选活动最繁忙的部分，大选活动在劳动节之后升温，尽管如果他运气不好，可能会与共和党全国代表大会重合，这对共和党来说是非常不利的分裂画面。但如果这些案件在秋季结束时没有定罪，特朗普可能会在竞选的最后阶段处于更有利的地位。“从他的角度来看，最好的情况是他被判无罪，然后全力投入大选，”他说理查德·布里福哥伦比亚大学研究政治进程的法学教授。
但特朗普也有可能在一个或多个案件中被定罪在...之后所有的选票都是在共和党初选中投出的，这可能会确保他留在11月的投票中。理论上，规则可以在提名大会上改变，允许承诺的代表投票给其他人，这是特朗普反对的一个长期策略2016年尝试未果。然而，这样的政变将非常难以实现，而且它可能不会受到大部分共和党选民的欢迎，他们认为特朗普应该能够担任总统，即使他被判犯有严重罪行(48%，根据YouGov/雅虎新闻的民意调查7月进行)。与此同时，没有规定说特朗普如果被判有罪就不能继续竞选。他甚至可以逃离监狱，尽管他不太可能在2024年大选前锒铛入狱。“特朗普会立即对任何定罪提出上诉，这需要时间，”布里弗特说。"我认为我们不能指望上诉法院在11月前做出裁决。"
然而，一旦审判结束，即使特朗普被定罪，这些案件也不太可能占用他太多的时间，因为根据欧文的说法，上诉需要的客户投入要少得多。因此，他可以自由地在竞选的最后几个月四处奔波，努力说服选民，他仍然应该连任。但是审判的时刻可能仍然会回来困扰他。“刑事审判不是人气竞赛，”她说。“这是对你做过的最有问题的决定的全面检查。不用说，这与总统竞选期间任何候选人想要的都是相反的。”
All Of Trump's Indictments Could Seriously Bog Down His Campaign
Former President Donald Trump’s growing list of indictments may throw a wrench into his campaign schedule next year.
SETH WENIG / AFP
Former President Donald Trump’s year just got even busier.
On Tuesday, Trump wasindicted by special counsel Jack Smithon four counts: conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government, conspiracy to violate people’s rights, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding and the actual obstruction of an official proceeding. That’s on top of two other sets of criminal charges filed against Trump in just the past five months — one fromthe Manhattan district attorney, and another from Smith’s team, involvingseparate federal charges. And this week’s indictment may not be the last of Trump’s legal troubles.Within the next few weeks, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis may ask a grand jury in Georgia to issue charges in a separate long-running investigation into efforts to overturn the result of the 2020 election, and Trump could be a target.
All of this means that by the end of the summer, Trump could be a defendant in four different criminal cases in four different courtrooms. That might not stop him from getting the Republican nomination — in fact, thefirst set of charges may actually have helped him. But even if they don’t damage him among his base, the indictments could hurt Trump simply by sucking up his time and attention. If he wants to avoid a conviction while running for president, he may need to spend a lot of energy dealing with these cases — leaving him with less bandwidth to campaign.
“Active client engagement is critical for success at trial,” saidC. Melissa Owen, a criminal defense attorney in North Carolina who is active in the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. “Trump is the best person to educate his lawyers about the circumstances in the cases, particularly his intent. Typically the more client involvement you have, the better the outcome.”
Juggling four different criminal cases is a daunting task for anyone, even if they’re not simultaneously trying to convince the American public to give them one of the most powerful jobs in the world. At first, most of the back-and-forth will happen out of the public eye: Before the trial begins,prosecutors will share informationthey’ve gatheredwith the defense team, and lawyers on both sidesmay ask the judgeto make decisions about how the case will go — including, in some situations, whether it will get thrown out. Owen said that some clients like to be more involved in these early stages of the process than others. But defense lawyers need some level of input from their client, she added, because new information is becoming available and their understanding of that information needs to line up with how the client sees it.
And then there’s the trial itself — which could be lengthy, depending on the number of witnesses who are being called and the scope of the evidence that’s being presented. Trump’s status as a former president couldthrow a wrench into the process, too. “Jury selection alone is going to be really complicated,” Owen said. Each trial could end up taking weeks before a verdict is reached. It is possible that Trump will try to get out of being in the courtroom while the trials are happening — he routinely choosesnot to show upincivil cases— but criminal defendants aregenerally expectedto be present for every day of their trial. And even if Trump isn’t forced to be there, skipping all or part of a trial is a big risk for him. “It’s a really bad look not to be there,” Owen said. “Let’s just say it’s a bad signal to the jury, that the defendant thinks they have a better place to be.”
So it’s possible that the various court proceedings could end up sucking up months of Trump’s time during crucial points in the campaign. Right now, he’s firstscheduled to go on trial in late March in New York, where he’s charged with falsifying business records as part of a payoff scheme for an adult-film actress during the 2016 campaign. That’s a couple of weeks after Super Tuesday — which means that while it’s possible that Trump will be the de facto GOP nominee by then, there’s also a chance that the Republican primary will still be grinding toward its conclusion.
The second trial, involving allegations that Trump illegally kept classified documents and obstructed efforts to get them back,is currently set for May. And if a similar pattern holds for the latest indictment — and any future indictment out of Fulton County — that means Trump could face additional trials in the summer of 2024, in two different places on the East Coast.
In some ways, that timing isn’t the worst for Trump, since the competitive portion of the Republican primary will likely be over by May. (If it’s not, the timing would be pretty terrible, since every state would be crucial in a down-to-the-wire primary campaign.) Trials throughout the summer wouldn’t interfere with the busiest part of a general election campaign, which heats up after Labor Day, although if he’s unlucky, one could coincide with the Republican National Convention, making for a very unfavorable split screen for the GOP. But if the cases are wrapped up by the fall without a conviction, Trump could be in an even stronger position in the home stretch of the campaign. “From his perspective, the best-case scenario is that he’s acquitted and then goes full-steam into the general election,” saidRichard Briffault, a law professor at Columbia University who studies the political process.
But there’s also the possibility that Trump will be convicted in one or more casesafterall of the votes have been cast in the GOP primary, which would likely ensure that he stays on the November ballot. In theory, the rules could be changed at the nominating convention to allow pledged delegates to vote for someone else, a long-shot gambit that Trump opponentsunsuccessfully tried in 2016. Such a coup would be extremely difficult to pull off, though, and it likely wouldn’t go over well with the large chunk of GOP voters who believe that Trump should be able to serve as president even if he’s convicted of a serious crime (48 percent,according to a YouGov/Yahoo News pollconducted in July). Meanwhile, there’s no rule that says Trump can’t keep running if he’s convicted of a crime. He could even run from prison, although he’s unlikely to end up behind bars before the 2024 election. “Trump would immediately appeal any conviction, and that would take time,” Briffault said. “I don’t think we could count on an appeals court decision by November.”
Once the trials are over, though, the cases are unlikely to take up much more of Trump’s time even if he’s convicted, since, according to Owen, appeals require much less client input. So he’d be free to spend the last few months of the campaign on the trail, working to convince voters that he still deserves a second term. But moments from the trials might still come back to haunt him. “A criminal trial is not a popularity contest,” she said. “It’s a full examination of the most questionable decisions you’ve ever made. Which, needless to say, is the opposite of what any candidate wants during a presidential campaign.”
