Trump and the art of legal delay
or why the Taxman Cometh regardless
If there is a predictability about Trump, it is in his legal strategy.
Hire a law firm and throw as many billable hours at delaying the possibility of “losing”.
Settling a case for 10 cents is not losing, neither is a getting a fat legal bill, nor is having cases on the docket long enough to enroll them in elementary school. Losing is reserved for judgements and verdicts. The strategy of “make them wait long enough and they’ll beg to settle” is pure Trump.
Every once in a while, a report comes out in which a Trump insider reveals how freaked out Trump gets about the possibility of being prosecuted criminally.
No wonder, criminal prosecutions from indictment to conviction are considerably faster than civil lawsuits. Delays rarely help defendants and are usually a sign of a plea bargain not dismissal of charges.
Need an example?
The Unite the Right organizers who planned a rally in Charlottesville, VA in August 2017 just lost a lawsuit in which they were found liable for more than $25 million. The lawsuit took a little more than three years.
By comparison, the murder of Heather Heyer by James Fields, Jr. on August 12, 2107 took about 11 months from arrest to conviction. (Fields was a Unite the Right participant and drove his car into a group of counter-protestors killing Heyer and injuring others.)
The Rittenhouse case was resolved in 15 months and the case against George McMichael, Travis McMichael, and William Bryan, who were charged in the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, went to jury deliberations after 21 months (and the case had a months long delay in even beginning an investigation). The Derek Chauvin case for the murder of George Floyd took less than 11 months.
After losing his case to keep his tax records from New York prosecutors, Trump has rather foolishly decided to sue to keep the House Ways and Means Committee from receiving his tax returns. When an indictment is issued in the New York case (politically speaking, it is a sure thing), Trump’s taxes, at least most of them, will be a matter of public record. Keeping Congress’ tax writing committees from them at this point is akin to telling rubberneckers "to “Move along, nothing to see here” after a 25 car pile-up. A ruling is expected before Christmas.
Donald Trump has plenty on his plate legally speaking. Manhattan prosecutors and the New York Attorney General’s office are after him for tax fraud, a grand jury may be impaneled soon in Georgia against Trump for election tampering, and the Select Committee investigating the January 6th Insurrection has subpoenaed a sizable chunk of Trump’s presidential papers related to the planned Trump rally that coincided with the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. With over 702 arrests stemming from what is looking more and more like a poorly planned coup, Donald Trump does not want to be number 703.
Except for the New York tax cases, Trump’s legal troubles are all tentative and his attorneys are fast at work putting whatever legal brakes they can to keep criminal investigations in a holding pattern.
The only problem is once a tax fraud indictment happens in New York, similar federal charges will made against Trump. And Georgia and D.C. can pile-on at that point as "free-riders”.
If Trump were actually running for president, this would be a risky strategy. It’s better to beat the charges now and have them be old news in 2 years versus having the charges be banner headlines, while Trump is kicking off his fifth presidential campaign. However using a potential presidential campaign to attack indictments as politically motivated is almost risk-free and pure Trump.