Dem
51
GOP
49
Maybe Trump's lawyers will manage to get the attention of the man upstairs, since they are throwing up Hail Marys all over the place.
First, there is New York, where, as expected, Trump has appealed the half-billion in verdicts against him. He was allowed to appeal right now, even without putting the funds (plus interest) in escrow. However, he has 30 days—er, now it's 29—to come up with the money, or New York AG Letitia James is allowed to start selling his assets.
Also in New York, Trump's lawyers made a 47-page filing in the former president's hush money case. It argues that Michael Cohen (i.e., the guy who actually handled the transactions) and Stormy Daniels (one of the two people who received the money) should not be allowed to take the stand because their testimony will be "false" and "salacious." So, Judge Juan Merchan is being asked to gut the prosecution's case preemptively. Good luck with that, Team Trump.
Heading south to Georgia, Trump's lawyers also made a filing there yesterday. This one claims that the defense has cell phone records that prove that Fulton County DA Fani Willis and former paramour Nathan Wade commenced a relationship at an earlier date than what they told the court. We are very skeptical of this claim, because it is hard-to-impossible to prove that, during those calls, the couple was whispering sweet nothings to one another, as opposed to talking business. Even if the frequency and length of the calls makes it seem like the calls were personal (which is the argument made by Trump's lawyers), "how things seem" is not proof. Besides, Willis can certainly argue that the case and RICO law are so complicated, that long calls were necessary.
And finally, further south still, the expected decision from Aileen Cannon (whether she will reverse a pretty bad decision or not) has not come down because Trump's lawyers buried her in motions on Friday—seven different ones. On the surface, what's going on is that Team Trump is grasping at every straw to get the documents case dismissed (for example, arguing, yet again, "presidential immunity"). What's really going on, however, is that Trump and his attorneys are trying to game the calendar. They want to dump enough stuff on Cannon that she postpones until the summer. In turn, they hope that: (1) will make it necessary for Tanya Chutkan to delay the Washington, DC, case until 2025; and (2) that Cannon will play ball and "discover," sometime in July or August, that a summer trial won't be possible after all, and she'll have to delay to 2025, as well.
In short, $50 million in legal fees (and counting) will buy you an awful lot of stuff from your lawyers' bags of tricks. Will some of the tricks work? Probably so. Will they all work? Trump is certainly hoping they will. (Z)