New Lawsuit Attempts to Remove Trump from the Ballot
Plus a recap of the legal cases against Trump.
Lawrence Caplan, a tax attorney, has filed suit in the Southern District Court of Florida to remove former President Trump from the 2024 ballot. The filing is full of spelling errors and misinformation but hinges on the idea that Trump has been charged with participating in an insurrection; therefore, he should not be able to run for office. There’s only one little problem: Trump has not yet been charged with insurrection. He hasn’t even been charged for inciting a riot.
The other problem with Caplan’s filing is that he is a Democrat looking to bar Trump from the GOP Primary. This isn’t Caplan’s first attempt to affect the outcome of an election. Back in 2004, four years before Limbaugh’s Operation Chaos, Caplan ran Operation: Snowbird in an attempt to get Florida snowbirds (people who only live in Florida during the winter to avoid snow in other areas) to vote in Florida instead of their home states in an attempt to turn Florida blue.
Hopefully, this case will get laughed out of court, but this won’t be the last attempt to remove Trump from the GOP ballot. In fact, New Hampshire Republicans are currently fighting over whether Trump should be allowed on the ballot there. There will likely be other suits in other states as well. According to lawtuber Robert Gouviea, all that is needed is for one judge to rule against Donald, and a precedent will be set.
The J6 Case in DC
A trial date of March 4, 2024, aka the day before Super Tuesday, has been set. Trump’s lawyers argued that because of the immense amount of discovery the prosecution had dumped on them (if the documents were printed and stacked, they would form a tower over 8 Washington Monuments tall), they would need two years to properly go through the evidence and prepare a defense, so they were asking for a start date in 2026.
The prosecution, represented by Ms. Molly Gaston, wanted to start the trial in January 2024. She told the judge that some 65% of the materials they turned over were duplicative, and another 25% were from Trump’s own organizations and PACs, so he would have had access to them beforehand. Ms. Gaston also told the judge that the prosecution had helpfully flagged all the relevant documents to their case, so the defense wouldn’t need that long to really prepare. The judge seemed to be irritated with Trump’s lawyer Lauro from the moment he opened his mouth, so clearly, this hearing wasn’t going to go well.
Lauro argued that he had not seen any of this material before now, and needed time to review the mountain of discovery because he could not just take the government’s word that they had marked all the relevant documents. The judge wasn’t having it. Judge Chutkan declared that other than the historical nature of a former President being charged, this case was just like any other case before her, and she would treat it as such. She stated that the prosecution had done an excellent job of organizing the discovery and that there was no way she would push the trial back to 2026. She did, however, grant the defense an extra two months, moving the trial start date from January to March.
The Classified Documents Case in Florida
When we last looked at this one, the prosecution had requested a Garcia hearing to alert Nauta of his lawyer’s conflict of interest, but Judge Cannon requested Nauta’s lawyer, Woodard, to look into the legality of the government using two grand juries. Woodard filed his objection to the Garcia hearing and quoted a 1922 case in which it was ruled that the prosecution could not use a second grand jury to continue investigating after the first grand jury had already brought an indictment.
The government responded that because “Trump employee 4” perjured himself in DC, it was right to use the DC grand jury to continue investigating the matter. They also said they started the investigation in DC but found evidence of alleged crimes in both DC and Florida and the fact that they didn’t indict in DC doesn’t mean anything.
RICO Case in GA
With 19 defendants, keeping track of all the moving pieces is hard. Lawfare, a news site focusing on legal matters and “Hard National Security Choices,” has put together an easy-to-access docket of sorts. They have a correspondent, Anna Bower, assigned to cover the case. Ms. Bower was in the courtroom for the Mark Meadows hearing to move his case to federal court on Monday, August 28, 2023. The hearing was looking to be a mini-trial, and Meadows took the stand in his defense. The judge refused to issue a ruling immediately, stating that he needed time to consider everything. Tuesday afternoon, the judge filed a request for more information from both sides. Since there are a few others who have also filed for removal to federal court set to appear before him, the judge may be waiting to hear from some of the others before making any rulings, especially since any ruling on one of the 19 defendants could affect all of the cases.
The timeline of all of these legal cases is insane, especially when you add in the election schedule. Time Magazine has a current run-down of key dates, including the latest trial dates in the DC J6 case. The true test of DA Fani Willis starts October 23, 2023, with the Cheseboro trial.
One thing is for sure: this next election cycle is going to be bumpy.
Lorraine Yuriar is a wife, mother, and a lifelong conservative, currently stuck in a very blue state.
As the witch hunt cont. They will do anything to stop him. They are afraid of him. Why are they not afraid of Desantis?
No surprise. The devil is relentless. This will go on ad infinitum.