Dem
51
GOP
49
Fulton County DA Fani Willis has now said that she expects the RICO trial to begin sometime late next year and last several months. She expects it to be ongoing on Election Day but won't conclude before Inauguration Day 2025. Needless to say, if this happens and Donald Trump is elected, having him be on trial the day he is inaugurated—and for a state crime for which he can't pardon himself—would be something, uh, unpresidented.
Georgia law allows trials to be televised and Judge Scott McAfee has already said that he will allow television cameras in his courtroom during the trial. Having the trial be in progress and broadcast live on Election Day would be, let's just say, unusual. If Trump were to be inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2025, and then convicted in February, it would put us in uncharted waters, to say the least. It is a given that if he is convicted in federal court, he will pardon himself and the Supreme Court would probably uphold the pardon because the Constitution does not put many limits on the power of the pardon. In Georgia, pardons are up to the Board of Pardons and Paroles, not the governor.
Would he go to a Georgia prison? Could he be president from prison? Who knows? All we know now is that Willis does not expect a verdict before Election Day and probably not before Inauguration Day.
One thing that could speed up the process is if all the small and medium fish make plea bargains. It doesn't even matter if not everyone has valuable evidence, as long as some of them do. From Willis' point of view, getting 17 of the 19 indictees on her side so she only has to prosecute Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani makes for a much simpler case. Having to prosecute someone for something that happened off in Coffee County is a distraction. She indicted those people only to get them to squeal on the others. Once they have done that, she doesn't care about them. On that score, fake elector Cathy Latham is now at $22,166 of the $300,000 she needs for lawyers. The needle is not moving there. She will be very lucky to hit $25,000. She and the other bit players are sooner or later going to try to get a deal. Maybe she already has. She has 2,890 prayers so far. She didn't specify her prayer goal though. At this rate, she'll be lucky to hit 3,000 prayers. (V)