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About a year ago, before Donald Trump had been criminally charged anywhere, I made the modest prediction that that would change in 2023. It did. Now he’s fighting four criminal cases as he runs for president in 2024, in the hopes that an electoral victory will crush or at least delay all of them.
On the criminal front, then, the question for 2024 is no longer if Trump will be charged but when those charges will see trial. Just as there was no guarantee Trump would be charged anywhere heading into 2023, there’s no guarantee he’ll be tried anywhere in 2024. The former president may well face at least one criminal jury before November, but heading into the new year, it’s an open question of which case will be first.
To understand why, here’s a brief recap:
- the federal election interference case in Washington, D.C., has an early March date but is in the midst of a pretrial appeal that could push it back;
- the federal classified documents and obstruction case in Florida has a May trial date and is with a judge who seems amenable to delay;
- the Georgia state election interference case has a whopping 15 defendants left on the indictment and still no trial date; and
- the New York state hush money prosecution has a late March date but appears available to adjustment, based on the other case schedules.
The D.C. case arguably poses the greatest risk to Trump, due to its combination of seriousness and the likelihood of going to trial with a judge inclined to move quickly. However, the schedule isn’t fully in the control of U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who had to put the case on hold pending Trump’s immunity appeal. The Supreme Court rejected special counsel Jack Smith’s request to step in early and decide the issue, so it’s proceeding along the normal (albeit expedited) route through the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Oral argument is set for Jan. 9, so the next big thing to look out for there is how quickly the circuit decides the case after argument. Whoever loses (probably Trump) is likely to appeal that ruling, ultimately leaving the calendar up to the Supreme Court, which hasn’t been eager to jump into the dispute.
That could leave the Manhattan case as the first indictment to go to a jury. That one has gotten short shrift in the seriousness category, though it could also be viewed as an election interference case of sorts, because the alleged scheme to silence Stormy Daniels’ claimed affair with Trump and then cover it up took place against the backdrop of the 2016 election. At any rate, if the federal election interference case is sufficiently tied up on appeal, Trump’s 34 felony counts of falsifying business records could be the first charges tested in court. It was the first of the four criminal cases to be indicted, after all.
To be sure, Trump’s criminal docket is just one aspect of his diverse legal exposure, with his business fraud trial and the latest E. Jean Carroll defamation case among his civil concerns kicking off 2024. And of course, there’s the question of whether he’s even eligible to take office again under the 14th Amendment, with the U.S. Supreme Court poised to settle that question nationwide. Though the disqualification issue is technically unrelated to his 91 total felony counts, being ineligible to hold office again would eliminate his best potential criminal defense.
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