Despite the Supreme Court giving Donald Trump near-absolute immunity and the rest of his trials certain to continue after Election Day, the Department of Justice doesn’t plan to back down in its cases against the former president and convicted felon.
A new report from The Washington Post, citing sources close to the department, said that prosecutors plan to pursue cases with a deadline of Inauguration Day in January, in keeping with the Supreme Court’s ruling that a sitting president can’t be prosecuted.
“The Justice Department isn’t governed by the election calendar. Its prosecution of Trump is based on the law, the facts and the Justice Manual — the department’s bible that lays out the post-Watergate norms that have prevented it from being weaponized,” Anthony Coley, a spokesperson for Attorney General Merrick Garland until last year, told the Post.
“Until those norms change, or they’re ordered otherwise, I’d expect this Justice Department to be full speed ahead. And they should be,” Coley added.
The Supreme Court’s ruling also placed restrictions on what kind of evidence could be collected from a presidential administration, dealing heavy blows to the federal election interference case against Trump. That change alone will add more delays to the D.C. trial, which was already pushed back thanks to the Supreme Court case on presidential immunity. If Trump wins reelection, his lawyers will very likely ask federal judges to drop the case.
Trump’s other federal case involves his alleged mishandling of classified documents in Florida, where he has a friendly judge who has bogged down the case with a myriad of seemingly irrelevant hearings. Even the one guilty verdict against Trump, his hush-money case in New York, has had its sentencing hearing postponed, with the judge giving an ominous warning about the case’s fate. Trump’s election interference case in Georgia is still in limbo, too.
While the DOJ’s reported intentions suggest that they will press for consequences for Trump, the fact of the matter is that thanks to the Supreme Court, Trump may evade any consequences altogether.
