Here are 4 ways Trump could walk free
CBC
Donald Trump walked out of a Miami courtroom following his not-guilty plea Tuesday and into a looming thicket of legal peril.
The former president faces a frightful prospect: potentially decades in prison, a de-facto life sentence for a 77-year-old man accused of illegally hoarding, showing off, and lying about top-secret documents. He faces 37 criminal charges in federal court.
There are several ways Trump could walk free. They involve a delay, a jury, a judge, and legal arguments touching both procedure and substance.
Here are his four potential paths out of legal peril, according to analysts.
Trump has an incentive to punt this case beyond 2024, until after the U.S. presidential election, and hope that either he or an ally is running the Justice Department starting on Jan. 20, 2025.
A Republican president could overturn the case with a pardon — or with the dubious, unprecedented and untested step of Trump trying to pardon himself, if he runs and wins.
This is destined to become a central election issue for the next 17 months — both in the Republican primaries, and then in the general election if Trump is the nominee.
One longshot Republican candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy, stood outside the courthouse Tuesday and promised a Trump pardon on Day 1 if he's elected president.
Prosecutors say they want a quick case.
Holding the trial in Florida might help. The average criminal case length in South Florida is nine months, half the length of a case in Washington, D.C.
"It could be tried as quickly as November of this year," Richard Gregorie, a former Miami prosecutor and assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of Florida, told CBC News.
Emphasis on the word could.
Gregorie added a caveat: If parties want to drag it out beyond the primaries early next year, and into the November general-election season, they can.
It depends on how many motions they file and on how many fights there are over evidence. "This could be drawn out for some time," Gregorie said.