Dem
51
GOP
49
There were a couple of pieces of news on the Donald Trump legal front yesterday, and both of them are probably good news for him. To start, if a federal judge appears to be shady, there is a way for private citizens to make a report to their judicial circuit for possible investigation. Well, there is at least some reason to think that maybe Aileen Cannon is shady. And so, in just the last week, there have been over 1,000 complaints filed against her. The 11th Circuit Judicial Council had decided that it will not act on the complaints and that, further, it will no longer accept complaints about Cannon. So much for that.
Meanwhile, over in Georgia, the Court of Appeals has set a date for oral arguments on the question of whether Fulton County DA Fani Willis should be removed from the Trump case due to conflicts of interest. That date is... October 4. Note that one of the parties has to request that oral arguments be heard (something that the defense will surely do), and also note that the Court can decide that written briefs (due by the end of June) are enough and that oral arguments are not necessary. So, it's still possible the Georgia case might move forward sometime this summer. But if the October 4 date holds—and it certainly could—then there is no way the case is tried before November's elections.
And so, each day, it becomes more and more likely that the only one of the three remaining Trump criminal cases that has a real chance of going to trial is the one in Washington, DC. As a reminder, that is waiting for a Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity, and SCOTUS tries to clear its desks of everything by July 1. (Z)