The Supreme Court delivered a predictable blow to Democrats’ lawfare campaign against former President Donald Trump, ruling 9-0 that state officials cannot unilaterally decide a candidate is disqualified and remove him from the ballot. That authority belongs to Congress, not the states, five of the justices held.
The decision is just the latest setback for leftists hoping to prevent Trump from running in the 2024 election altogether. Last week, the Supreme Court announced it would take up another case regarding Trump — one that will weigh his claim to presidential immunity against charges related to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Though it’s likely the justices will rule against Trump’s immunity argument, the Supreme Court’s decision to take it up has all but guaranteed that special counsel Jack Smith won’t get the speedy trial he wants. And if he can’t expedite the trial, then he can’t guarantee a Trump conviction before November’s election, much to the chagrin of the Left.
Then there’s the debacle down in Georgia, where Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has destroyed the credibility of her case against the former president along with any shred of dignity she might have had. Witness testimony has proved she was engaged in a romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor she assigned to the Trump case, who had no experience prosecuting a single felony in the state before being awarded the lucrative position. The hearings over the past couple of weeks also revealed Willis and Wade likely perjured themselves under oath when pressed about their relationship and its implications for the case against Trump.
If Willis is disqualified from the case — as she very well should be — her entire office will be disqualified as well. That means a new prosecutor would have to take over her sprawling RICO case against Trump and 18 other co-defendants for allegedly conspiring to overturn the 2020 election results. Either way, Willis’s ethical scandal has so badly delayed and marred the case that it will be very difficult to find a sympathetic jury pool and get it to trial before November’s election.
Of course, Trump is still facing a litany of other legal challenges, including a recent New York court decision in a civil fraud case against him and his business that could force him to pay a $450 million fine. But all of these recent developments are very bad news for Democrats, who are stuck with an extremely weak incumbent in President Joe Biden. Former Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer admitted as much in a recent Substack post about the Jan. 6 case, writing, “Some worried Democrats comforted themselves by believing that Trump’s chances to return to the White House would end with a conviction. No trial before the election means no conviction.”
In fact, it’s likely that the only reason top Democratic officials aren’t already openly pressuring Biden to drop out of the race is because they’ve convinced themselves that at least one of the cases against Trump will stick. One felony conviction and the dynamics of the race will change completely — or so they believe.
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But Biden’s weaknesses are as prolific as those in the churned-up cases against Trump. And while Trump continues to gain in the polls despite the legal attacks against him, Biden has shown no sign of being able to turn things around.
Look for Democrats to find a new solution to the Trump problem before their convention this summer.