Donald Trump’s first criminal trial is starting in just under two weeks, and he is running out of options to delay it. But, there could be a chance for him to buy some more time, but only if he goes scorched earth on his own legal team. A former prosecutor has pointed out that his only chance of getting a significant delay would be to fire his entire team of lawyers, which would give him the ability to argue that his new team needs time to prepare and learn the case. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains what could happen if Trump goes that route.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Well folks, we now have less than two weeks until Donald Trump is supposed to be facing his very first criminal trial, the hush money trial in New York. And he is running out of options to get that trial delayed any further. The start date jury selection is set to begin on April 15th. So he’s gotta think fast about what to do if he doesn’t wanna show up in a courtroom in the middle of April. And according to former prosecutor Joyce Vance, Trump really only has two options left. Now, before I tell you the two options he has left, it’s important to know that Donald Trump’s lawyers went to court in a filing this week and actually tried to argue that hey, he’s too famous basically to be prosecuted because we talked to 400 New Yorkers and they all said he’s already guilty, so you have to delay the trial indefinitely, they asked for.
Well, that’s not gonna work because those are issues that you actually deal with during jury selection. But Joyce Vance pointed out two more things Trump could possibly do to get this thing delayed. The first one is that he could ask for the judge to be recused. And if the court decides to take that up, that could cause a little bit of a delay, although I’m willing to bet they would go very quickly with it. Trump already suggested in his meltdown about having an expanded gag order that the judge should be recused. So that seems like a likely option that Trump will go with. The second option is what I’m calling the scorched earth option. And that is Donald Trump could actually just fire his entire legal team, which would then cause him to have to hire new lawyers. And then constitutionally, he can make the argument to the judge like, hey, I’ve got new lawyers. I have a constitutional right to representation of my choosing. I’m choosing these people, but they need time to learn the case, to come up with their arguments. So we have to delay the trial.
But again, that’s the scorched earth technique. He would have to fire his entire legal team in order for that to even possibly work. And then Vance points out, it still probably wouldn’t even work. Here’s what she wrote. With trial only two weeks away, Trump is showing increasing signs of desperation. There are also the time honored strategies of the desperate, getting sick or finding a sick or dying family member and firing your lawyers. What happens if Trump fires his lawyers? This can be a difficult one because defendants are entitled to counsel of their choosing, and lawyers are entitled to sufficient time to prepare. But Trump has a lot of lawyers on his team and the judge has to be prepared for this one. Trump would have to argue a significant issue has developed with his lawyers before the judge would agree to let them out of the case. And it’s going to be difficult to do that with all of them.
The judge could tell him to go ahead with the remaining lawyers because if Trump does this at the 11th hour, it’s going to look manufactured, but it’s still an issue the judge has to be careful about to avoid problems on appeal. And so far judge Merchan has shown himself to be a careful, meticulous jurist. Whew. So therein lies the problem though, right? Like it would be obvious that Donald Trump would be doing this to delay the trial. But then again, if the judge knows that and says, I’m not gonna give your lawyers time to prepare, then Trump’s gonna win on appeal. Like, he will easily win on appeal. So Trump could have that option, but he can’t just fire his lawyers. The lawyers can’t just leave the case. The judge has to approve it. So if there aren’t valid legal reasons for these people to be removed from the team, Trump’s not gonna be able to go with that option. So his only hope at this point is maybe he can get sick and delay it a few days because other than that, he’s heading to court on April 15th.
