Usually, the best place for a reporter to cover the race for President is out on the campaign trail, watching candidates meet with voters while trudging through the January snow and cold in Iowa and New Hampshire.
But when it comes to former President Donald Trump in 2024, reporters may be better off staking out various courtrooms around America.
While Trump already faces criminal charges in Georgia, New York, and in two cases brought by the feds, the legal wrangling now includes state efforts to keep him off the ballot for his role in the Jan. 6 attack. The ballot cases from Colorado and Maine could quickly reach the U.S. Supreme Court.
“The Supreme Court will ultimately uphold the Constitution,” predicted U.S. Rep. Mike Collins, R-Jackson.
But there are many more legal headaches for Trump and the Republican Party.
Even before the ballot cases emerged, Trump was heading for a showdown at the Supreme Court, as he tries to ward off a federal election interference case.
Lawyers for Trump will tell a federal appeals court on Jan. 9 that he has ‘absolute Presidential immunity’ when it comes to criminal charges lodged against him, a claim that federal prosecutors have ridiculed.
That federal trial is slated to start on March 4 — one day before Super Tuesday.
While the U.S. Supreme Court often gets drawn into an election year — just look at the landmark decision in 2022 on abortion — the justices may play a much more direct role in 2024, especially if they have to rule on multiple cases involving Trump.
Democrats have been putting public pressure on Justice Clarence Thomas to step aside, arguing the actions of his wife in pressing false claims of 2020 election fraud should disqualify him from playing a role in Trump cases.
In a December letter, U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Lithonia, told Thomas, “you must do the honorable thing and recuse yourself from any decisions in the case of United States v. Trump.”
Three years since Jan. 6 — when Trump supporters rushed the Capitol in a violent bid to keep him in office — what we’re hearing from Trump is nothing new.
In one legal brief filed this week, Trump’s lawyers recycled — yet again — a series of false 2020 election fraud claims about Georgia and other states, as Trump again declared the election had been ‘rigged and stolen.’
Trump never had evidence of fraud in Georgia back then — and still has none today.
But he keeps making that charge to voters — and the courts.
Buckle up, America. The 2024 campaign may be unlike any other.
Jamie Dupree has covered national politics and Congress from Washington, D.C. since the Reagan administration. His column appears weekly in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. For more, check out his Capitol Hill newsletter at http://jamiedupree.substack.com
About the Author
