Keeping Track Of The Whole Fani Willis Saga

The big news yesterday was Fani Willis's acknowledgement of a "personal" relationship with her special prosecutor Nathan Wade, but that was just a limited hangout meant to minimize what was already generally and correctly assumed. I decided to bring myself up to date on the whole range of other motions, lawsuits, subpoenas, and allegations against Willis in the wake of the initial complaint by defense attorney Ashleigh Merchant on behalf of Trump codefendant Mike Roman. Quite a lot has emerged in just a three-week period.

The original Roman motion to disqualify Willis was filed on January 8 with Judge Scott McAfee, who is presiding over the Fulton County RICO trial. All the other actions have cascaded from this motion.

On January 12,

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) sent a letter to Nathan Wade, an associate of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, demanding documents and information about the coordination of the Fulton County District Attorney's Office (FCDAO) with other politically motivated investigations and the potential misuse of federal funds. Although Fani Willis has so far refused to cooperate with the Committee's oversight, invoices that Nathan Wade submitted for payment by the FCDAO, and made public as part of a court filing, highlight this collusion.

The letter requested all documents, communications, memoranda, invoices, and contracts by Januatry 26. The response from Wade's office is currently unknown, althokugh a February 2 subpoena by Jordan, discussed below, appears to be an attempt to enforce this initial request.

On January 21, the chairman of the Fulton County Audit Committee,

Bob Ellis, sent a letter to Ms. Willis late last week asking whether she engaged in a “romantic relationship” with Mr. Wade or if she “misused” county funds. He also asked whether she “accepted valuable gifts and personal benefits from a contractor [or] recipient of County funds.”

. . . His letter also demanded that the district attorney’s office provide invoices, costs, fees, and other expenses since Jan. 1, 2021. He gave her a deadline for Feb. 2, 2024.

On January 25,

Lawyers for former President Donald Trump said the district attorney in the Georgia election interference prosecution should be removed from the case, claiming she “inappropriately injected race into the case and stoked racial animus” in response to allegations of misconduct against her.

. . . [Trump's lawyers allege] she vigorously defended Wade and his qualifications in a speech during a service honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. at a historic Black church in Atlanta on Jan. 14. She suggested during that address that the questioning of Wade’s hiring was rooted in racism.

“These assertions by the DA engender a great likelihood of substantial prejudice towards the defendants in the eyes of the public in general, and prospective jurors in Fulton County in particular,” Sadow and Little wrote. “Moreover, the DA’s self-serving comments came with the added, sought after, benefit of garnering racially based sympathy for her self-inflicted quagmire.”

In doing this, Trump officially joined the original motion filed by Ashleigh Merchant on behalf of Mike Roman to disquality Willis based on her undisclosed relationship with Wade.

On January 26,

the [Georgia] state Senate approved legislation that will permit a special committee to investigate Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis amid misconduct allegations.

The alleged misconduct "includes the ongoing expenditure of significant public funds for the purpose of hiring a special assistant district attorney with whom District Attorney Willis had, and may yet have, an ongoing romantic relationship," the resolution states.

On January 31, the Washington Free Beacon reported on a 2022 whistleblower complaint by Amanda Timpson, an employee in the district attorney's office.

Timpson claimed to Willis that she had been demoted after attempting to stop a top Willis campaign aide from misusing federal grant money meant for a youth gang prevention initiative.

According to Timpson, the aide, Michael Cuffee, planned to use part of a $488,000 federal grant—earmarked for the creation of a Center of Youth Empowerment and Gang Prevention—to pay for "swag," computers, and travel.

"He wanted to do things with grants that were impossible, and I kept telling him, like, 'We can't do that,'" Timpson told Willis in a Nov. 19, 2021, meeting. "He told everybody … 'We're going to get MacBooks, we're going to get swag, we're going to use it for travel.' I said, 'You cannot do that, it's a very, very specific grant.'"

. . . Less than two months later, Willis abruptly terminated Timpson and had her escorted out of her office by seven armed investigators, according to Timpson. When Timpson filed a whistleblower complaint the following year that alleged wrongful termination, Willis's office issued a statement describing Timpson as a "holdover from the prior administration" who was terminated because of her "failure to meet the standards of the new administration."

. . . Timpson in August 2022 filed a whistleblower complaint in Fulton County Superior Court, seeking damages for lost wages. The case is in discovery.

The Washington Free Beacon story outlines other allegations from Timpson that cover widespread misallocation of grant money from numerous sources for computerrs, airfare, hotels, and car rentals. The Free Becon infers that this is a general pattern in Willis's office that extends beyond the particular Nathan Wade scandal.

On January 31, Ashleigh Merchant, the lawyer for Trump co-defendant Michael Roman who filed the original motion that's led to the subsequent events, filed a lawsuit against Willis with a subpoena demanding that she and Wade testify in the February 15 hearing in Judge McAfee's court:

Merchant alleges in the lawsuit that the DA’s office isn’t complying with the Georgia Open Records Act by intentionally stalling requests for documents. She said that the office has “refused, without adequate explanation, to provide” Roman’s legal team “with many of the requested materials that are known to exist and which are not subject to any exception in the Act and some of which have been outstanding since September of 2023.”

Merchant asks the court to order the DA’s office to hand over the records she seeks or show that they can’t be provided. She also requested that the court award her team the expenses incurred in trying to get Willis to comply with the law.

On February 2, following up on the Free Beacon story linked above,

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) has subpoenaed Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis over allegations that she misused federal funds.

In the subpoena and cover letter, both obtained by FOX 5, Jordan claims that the District Attorney's Office has "failed to comply voluntarily" with the committee's requests for documents connected to the office's receipt and use of U.S. Department of Justice grants.

. . . Jordan cites in the new letter to Willis a report from the Washington Free Beacon alleging that Willis fired an employee who tried to stop the Fulton County District Attorney's Office from using a federal grant for the creation of a Center of Youth Empowerment and Gang Prevention for travel, computers and "swag."

. . . Willis has been asked to appear before the Judiciary Committee in Washington, D.C. on the morning of Feb. 23 - a little more than a week after she is scheduled to appear before a Fulton County judge for a hearing on allegations she had an improper romantic relationship with Wade.

This subpoena appears to have been issued in response to Wade's not answering Jordan's January 12 letter. So far, Willis's pattern has been either not to respond to requests for information or to suggest that the allegations against her are based on racism. At this point, though, she will still need to respond to the Fulton County Audit Committee, the February 15 hearing in Judge McAfee's courtroom with the additional Ashleigh Merchant subpoena on that date, the request to appear before the House Judiciary Committee on February 23, and as yet unspecified inquiries from the Georgia state Senate.

This pressure is likely to be unrelanting, and it's hard not to think it will begin to affect the Fulton County RICO trial, as of now tentatively scheduled for August. My own view is that she won't survive this level of public exposure.

Trump January 6 Trial Taken Off Court Calendar, Indefinitely Postponed

Via the Washington Post,

Former president Donald Trump’s March 4 trial date on charges of plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 election has been dropped from the public calendar of the federal court in Washington, a sign of what has long been anticipated — that his claim of presidential immunity from criminal prosecution would delay his trial while it remains on appeal.

. . . As of at least Thursday, the March 4 trial date was dropped from a date-searchable calendar on the public website of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. It was not immediately clear when it was removed. An internal master court trial calendar distributed Jan. 26 showed Trump’s trial date, suggesting the change was recent, according to a federal official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an internal document.

Chutkan also has acknowledged that Trump’s March trial was off. On Jan. 24, for example, Chutkan scheduled a new trial for April 2, when Trump’s projected six- to eight-week trial would have been ongoing. On Wednesday, Chutkan set a March 18 hearing for another defendant, saying, “I suspect in March I will not be in trial.”

Chutkan’s next trial is set for July 2. The judge set that date in December, a sign that she believed Trump’s trial would be over by then.

On Sunday, I noted the increasing concern that the DC appeals court had not issued an expected quick rebuff of Trump's appeal. The Post concludes,

But since Trump’s appeal paused his case, Chutkan has no authority to set a new trial schedule or impose other burdens or deadlines on the defense until higher courts respond. Chutkan has also made clear that if and when she gets the green light to set a new date, she would not set shorter deadlines that would require Trump’s attorneys to make up for lost time, suggesting the trial would be pushed back weeks if not months.

The concern at the appeals court's delay has only been building. From Politico on Wednesday, before the news of the case's disappearance from the court calendar:

Whether Donald Trump faces a potential prison sentence in 2024 is at the mercy of a federal appeals court that’s operating on its own schedule — at a time when every day matters.

More than 50 days have elapsed since Trump’s criminal proceedings in a Washington, D.C., trial court — on charges for attempting to subvert the 2020 election — were paused indefinitely. They won’t resume until the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and, most likely, the Supreme Court resolve the question hanging over the entire case: whether Trump, as a former president, is immune from criminal prosecution.

. . . Lengthy delays in his federal criminal cases create the possibility that, if he wins the presidency this November, Trump could avoid the charges altogether by having the Justice Department end the prosecutions or perhaps even by pardoning himself.

The original lawfare strategy, which appears to have been finalized in mid-2023, relied on the New York civil cases to establsih Trump as a fraudster, rapist, and slanderer, with the January 6 case going to trial on March 4, the day before Super Tuesday. The intent appears to have been to knock Trump out as a general election candidate in the Republican primaries, but so far, it appears that the New York cases haven't been taken seriously by the electorate, given the bizarre figures like Judge Engoron and E Jean Carroll who've emerged, while disappointing performances by all of Trump's Republican primary opponents have put that contest out of reach well before March 4, with that particular trial now postponed to the indefinite future.

In fact, as I noted on Sunday, much more delay from the DC appeals court means that even if it does issue a stern rebuke to Trump in coming days or weeks, Trump will appeal to the US Supreme Court, but the court will likely not take up the case before its summer break, almost certainly pushing the trial past the November election even if the Supreme Court eventually also rejects Trump's argument.

My spidey sense, though, also tells me that even the DC appeals panel, whatever their political loyalties, feels deeply uncomfortable about being stampeded into a quick decision to achieve a limited political goal, and the refusal of the US Supreme Court to hear the case on an expedited basis already reflects a judicial instinct not to be rushed into a decision on such a momentous issue.

But this whole question leaves out the separate issue of District Attorney Willis's problems in the Fulton County RICO trial. Again, the lawfare strategy appears to have had an inchoate goal of somehow getting Trump into a prison cell, or at least convicted of a conspiracy, before the November election. The difficulty is that, as with the New York civil trials, even if Willis and Wade manage to hold onto their posiitons and continue the prosecution, the proceedings will turn out to be too farcical to carry much credibility with the electorate.

As far as anyone can tell, the lawfare strategy was going to be a centerpiece of Biden's reelection campaign. Right now, it appears not just to be collapsing, but degenerating into slapstick.

UPDATE: Via Just the News:

U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan on Friday officially suspended former President Donald Trump's March 4 trial in special counsel Jack Smith's election case, The Hill reported.

Both Parties Are Terrified Of Trump On The Border

Last Saturday, I noted that Trump had effectively killed the Langford Republican border compromise. Since then, Langford and others have blamed "intetrnet rumors" for destroying the plan's prospects:

Lankford said, “Right now these internet rumors is all the people are running on. It would be absolutely absurd for me to agree to 5,000 people a day. This bill focuses on getting us to zero illegal crossings a day. There’s no amnesty. It increases the number of border patrol agents, increases asylum officers. It increases detention beds so we can quickly detain and then deport individuals. It ends catch and release. It focuses on additional deportation flights out. It changes our asylum process so that people get a fast asylum screening at a higher standard, and then get returned back to their home country. This is not about letting 5,000 people in a day. This is the most misunderstood section of this proposal.”

The problem is that Langford won't release any specifics about the plan that would refute the rumors, and he complains the problem is that it's a "presidential election year", which is a backhanded acknowledgement that Trump is driving policy for enough Senate Republicans to kill the deal. Meanwhile, Biden's response has been that Republicans are preventing action on the border by delaying the same deal:

Biden announced his endorsement of the deal late Friday evening.

“Securing the border through these negotiations is a win for America. For everyone who is demanding tougher border control, this is the way to do it. If you’re serious about the border crisis, pass a bipartisan bill and I will sign it,” Biden said in a statement.

But via the same link, the deal is already dead, and Trump killed it:

Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has backed away from the deal, and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has told colleagues that the deal is “dead on arrival” in the House.

Former President Donald Trump, the likely Republican presidential nominee, has helped expose the deal’s details to hugely expand overall immigration to the United States — publicly and privately urging Senate Republicans to oppose the effort.

Sens. Thom Tillis (R-NC), Mitt Romney (R-UT), John Thune (R-SD), and Todd Young (R-IN) have complained that Trump’s influence has made the deal toxic for other Republicans to sign on to.

Trump's ability to drive events is continuing to worry Republican senators. According to Politico,

Asked if the agreement appears to be on a path toward passing the Senate, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) replied: “It certainly doesn’t seem like it.”

“There are a number of our members who say, ‘Well, I'll join a majority of the Republicans but if it doesn't enjoy that sort of support, then count me out,'” Cornyn said in an interview. “The whole idea of passing something that the House won't even take up is another challenge."

There are two main reasons for the growing questions about the bill’s future: Trump's attacks and Johnson's vows not to take it up. And the two seem related; Johnson said Tuesday he had talked to Trump about the issue “at length” though he denied they are opposing it for political reasons.

Opposing it for political reasons in a presidential election year with Trump the likely Republican nominee? Perish the thought! But the fear is extending beyond Republicans:

Some Democrats and the White House have acknowledged that President Biden could take executive actions to better secure the U.S. border without additional legislation passed by Congress.

Pressure is mounting on Biden to issue executive orders to address the border crisis after he rescinded many Trump-era border executive orders upon taking office. Biden unilaterally ended the border emergency that Trump had implemented after he took office in January 2021 as well.

Just the News asked Rep. Lou Correa, D-Calif., how he responds to those who argue that Biden could fix a lot of the border issues unilaterally since he eliminated a lot of former President Donald Trump's border executive orders when he came into office.

"There's a lot of issues here, OK? There's some things he could do," he said. "I'm hoping that as soon as the Senate comes up with their deal, that we get at least a shot at looking at it, voting. I'm not sure if I'll support it. Give us a shot at voting on it."

But it's likely there will never be a vote in the plan -- even Democrat senators don't want to be on record voting for the controversial and as yet unpublished aspects of the "compromise". As of yesterday, Speaker Johnson declared the deal "officially dead".

Trump is happy to get credit for killing the deal:

On Saturday, at a campaign rally in Nevada, the Republican presidential front-runner seemed to gloat about his efforts to kill the bill.

"As the leader of our party there is zero chance I will support this horrible open borders betrayal of America. It's not going to happen," Trump said. "I notice a lot of the Senators are trying to say -- respectfully they are blaming it on me, I say that's OK please blame it on me, please, because they were getting ready to pass a very bad bill."

With the bill dead and even Democrats acknowledging Biden can and must act over the border, this leaves the next step up to Biden, whose options are now pretty limited. If he does anything, it will appear that Trump forced him to do it.

More Comes Out On The January 6 Pipe Bomb Investigations

Yesterday's post on the FBI and ATF investigations of the January 6 pipe bombs was based primarily on testimony before the House Judiciary Committee from last summer. Since then, new allegations about those investigations have emerged. As of yesterday's post, the official story was that notwithstanding the FBI's huge investigative resources, three years of searching for the bomber have come up empty, while it seems as if the person who discovered the bomb the next day was never seriously considered as a suspect, despite this being a basic investigative principle.

Via the Daily Wire this past Monday:

A former FBI agent said that the Bureau quickly believed that it tied the person who planted pipe bombs at the Democrat National Committee and the Republican National Committee to a particular Metro fare card and license plate, but did not allow him to interview the person of interest and pulled his team off of the lead.

. . . Kyle Seraphin, who led FBI surveillance teams, told The Daily Wire that shortly after January 6, a counterintelligence team met him at a firehouse in Falls Church, Virginia to brief him on his next surveillance target: They had used security footage to follow the person into a Metro station after he planted the bombs, and identified the fare card that was used.

That fare card then allowed them to determine that the person got off at a Metro stop in Northern Virginia, where surveillance footage showed the person entering a car. Both the car and the fare card were in the name of the same person — a retired Air Force chief master sergeant who was now working as a contractor with a security clearance, they said.

Seraphin and his team were assigned to stake out the person’s row house for days, but the FBI blocked his request to interview the person, he said. Then they were called off the target completely and told to pore through low-priority leads about minor January 6 participants, he said.

This information was initially published in May 2023:

The Washington Times first reported the allegation in May 2023. The article, which was paywalled, did not get widespread attention, yet when the House Judiciary Committee interviewed Steve D’Antuono, the former head of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, it seemed to be on his mind.

“People like Kyle Seraphin and others that are not a case agent, have no knowledge of the case, have no knowledge of what happened in the case, he also made another accusation too that there was an individual with a Metro card. My understanding is all that was chased down. There was a lead that was chased down, but he says that we didn’t chase it down,” D’Antuono said.

His comment seemed to confirm that the Metro card lead did exist, and he did not explain how or why it ultimately resulted in nothing.

Yesterday, more information also came out about the person who found the pipe bombs:

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) on Tuesday confirmed the person who found the January 6 pipebombs is a current US Capitol Police Officer.

Earlier this month new explosive J6 footage was released. It turns out that a plainclothes police officer found the DNC pipebombs at 1:05 pm on January 6.

Darren Beattie said according to sources who have seen the extended video, bomb robots showed up several minutes later and dismantled and diffused [sic] the pipe bomb.

Although former FBI Washington Field Office head D'Antuono discounted Kyle Seraphin's knowledge of the case, Seraphin did raise a key question in the first link above:

"The bureau is far too competent to fail this,” he said. “When they had the World Trade Center bombing in ‘93 they went under four stories of rubble and were able to find a partial VIN number that they used to track it down to the people responsible. And you’re telling me you had a pristine, non-detonated bomb and they couldn’t find anything on it?”

As a true crime fan, I've got to say this would appear to be another case of Investigations 101 -- you look at product information from the off-the-shelf components of the bomb, manufacturer, SKUs, batch numbers, and so forth, that you trace back to the store that sold them on a particular date and location. Then you look at surveillance video of the sale. The kitchen timer, apparently a common item, would be one line of inquiry, but electrical components, the pipe, and even the explosive would be another -- and since the bomb didn't detonate, all these items would be intact and available.

It appears that the Republicans are on the case, and more will inevitably come out. I'm still intrigued at the strange echoes of the Richard Jewell case -- there, the FBI focused on Jewell as the suspect, because he found the bomb. Now I note that the DNC bomb was planted under a park bench, which is where Jewell found the Atlanta bomb. It's almost as though someone in the FBI cooked up a scenario for a phony bombing based on the easiest example he could think of.

The Puzzle Of The January 6 Pipe Bombs

Yessterday I mentioned in passing the curious case, one of several from January 6, of two pipe bombs that were planted outside the Democrat and Republican national headquarters respectively. The FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms haven't been fully forthcoming over this case, and among other things, the perp or perps have never been idenified.

"People surmise and suspect that, 'oh, there's all this video all over the country, all over D.C.' It's not true," Steven D'Antuono, the former head of the FBI Washington Field Office, testified before the House Judiciary Committee on June 7, 2023.

. . . "We did every check, every lab test, every data. We ran this through systems back and forth, up and down, sideways, all over the place," he testified about the search for the suspect.

The bombs did not detonate, however, the FBI noted that the suspect placed them in "residential and commercial areas in Capitol Hill just blocks from the U.S. Capitol with viable pipe bombs that could have seriously injured or killed innocent bystanders."

"Over the past three years, a dedicated team of FBI agents, analysts, data scientists and law enforcement partners has worked thousands of hours conducting interviews, reviewing physical and digital evidence, and assessing tips from the public about who may have placed pipe bombs on Capitol Hill," said David Sundberg, assistant director in charge of the FBI Washington Field Office.

One of the questions raised about the bombs' viability, though, was the type of timers used. Although Mr D'Antonuo in his testimony claimed the FBI had determined that the bombs were viable, the problem remains that they didn't explode even though they were apparently intended to do so. Photos of the bombs indicate that the timers were one-hour kitchen type timers, but the bombs were discovered unexploded 17 hours after they had been placed. Per the House Judiciary Committee's release:

While Mr. D'Antuono referenced a report from the FBI laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, that the pipe bombs were viable, and 'they could explode, and they could cause harm or death,' Mr. D'Antuono also acknowledged that the timer used on the pipe bomb could not have detonated the pipe bomb given the time already elapsed between placement and discovery.

He testified:

Mr. Massie. Well, let me ask you this: Do you think it was technically possible for a kitchen timer . . . that has [a] 1-hour duration . . . to detonate a bomb 17 hours later?

A. No, I don't. And I saw the same kitchen timer as you. I agree. I don't know when they were supposed to go off. Maybe they weren't supposed to go off. We can't—we don't know. We honestly don't know, and that's some of the pain . . . .

A second problem was the FBI apparently never considered the person who discovered the bombs might be a suspect and seems to know nothing about him. Per the transcript of Mr D'Antuono's interview:

Mr. Massie. Because I think it's remarkable it was discovered within minutes of the other bomb being discovered. And my staff and I found video, and I don't know if you're aware of it, that seems to indicate that a passerby in a black hoodie --

Mr. D'Antuono. Oh, okay.

Mr. Massie. -- discovered that. Remarkably coincidental time. Walked up to a Metro police car, told the Metro police, who seems to have directed that individual in the video that I've seen to a detailee of the Vice President's car, another SUV, and within minutes, they get out of their SUV, find -- the officials now see the bomb. And then incoming Vice President Kamala Harris is evacuated. This all happens within minutes.

Mr. D'Antuono. Okay.

Mr. Massie. But the individual in a hoodie going up to two police cars after he's passed by that bench, did your investigation review this video?

Mr. D'Antuono. I'm not aware of the video you're talking about, sir. I'm not.

Mr. Massie. If you had seen that video, would you be interested in speaking to that person --

Mr. D'Antuono. Absolutely.

Mr. Massie. -- who seems to have discovered that second bomb?

Mr. D'Antuono. In any investigation, whoever discovers the device is somebody you need to talk to, right, because they could be the one that planted the device in the first place. You know, so that's just investigation 101.

But as far as anyone knows, even though the person or people who discovered the bombs went up to Capitol Police to report them, nobody seems to have taken their name or names and followed up.

This is especially puzzling, since the FBI has clear institutional memory of another bombing investigation, the Richard Jewell case:

During the 1996 Summer Olympics, a security guard named Richard Jewell discovered a bomb in Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park on July 27, 1996. Thanks to Jewell’s quick thinking, he was able to evacuate dozens of people just before the bomb exploded, saving untold lives.

But just a few days later, media reports surfaced that the FBI had made Jewell the prime suspect in the bombing. The hero quickly became a villain in the public eye. Media outlets across the country — from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution to CNN — painted Richard Jewell as a wannabe cop who was so desperate to play the hero that he was willing to kill people for it.

For an agonizing 88 days, everyone seemed to agree that Richard Jewell was guilty — even though he had never even been officially charged with the crime. In reality, the FBI soon stopped investigating Jewell when they realized that he wasn’t the man they were looking for.

For that matter, the FBI had its institutional memory refreshed just two years earlier with the release of the 2019 Clint Eastwood film that covered the case. All of this feeds reasonable suspicion that if federal provocateurs didn't plant the bombs themselves, the FBI was aware of the effort and has been feigning incompetence to cover it up.

If we ever get good answers, it will only be after Trump is reelected in 2024.

What's The Real 2024 Subtext?

A CNN op-ed from Julian Zelizer, a Princeton history professor, from last Friday asks some productive questions about Trump's so-far highly successful 2024 candidacy:

Following Trump’s strong showing in the New Hampshire primary, which has effectively knocked his final opponent — former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley — out of the race, some of his critics continue to search for slivers of good news.

They point to the fact that despite “almost” being an incumbent, he didn’t receive a share of the vote on par with what previous incumbents have encountered in primary contests. Incumbents usually bring to the table unequaled name recognition, fund-raising capacity and the benefit of looking presidential as they run for reelection. Trump has most of this, with his supporters holding on to the memory of him in the Oval Office, and with many of his backers believing he literally won the presidency in 2020, yet Haley pulled a decent part of the electorate away from him.

The ambiguity of Trump's quasi-incumbent status is generally acknowledged, not least by Joe Biden himself over the weekend:

While giving an economic speech to voters in South Carolina, Biden stated, “Did you see what he recently said about. . . he wants to see the economy crash this year? A Sitting President.”

Prof Zelizer come close to the point when he notes that many of Trump's backers believe he literally won the election. On the other hand, I think it's more accurate to say they'll sign on to the idea that the election was "stolen". The connotation of the word goes far beyond any literal definition of a property crime; definition 3 for "steal" in this on line dictionary is "to take or gain insidiously or artfully", as in "he stole her heart" or "she stole the spotlight".

Wikipedia continues to characterize Trump's insistence that the 2020 election was "stolen" as a "conspiracy theory":

As of June 2021, Trump has continued to echo the conspiracy theory that the election was "stolen"; particularly focusing on the efforts of Arizona Senate Republicans to audit the results of the election in Maricopa County and on a lawsuit disputing the results of the election in Georgia.

But even absent proof of electoral fraud sufficient to overturn ballot results, the use of the word "stolen" outside a specific legal context isn't a conspiracy theory; it's no more of a big lie than to claim an umpire is blind or someone can't organize a two-car funeral, when after all, if we check the facts, he quite possibly can, and for that matter, the umpire can see perfecly well.

The fact is that since 2020, the American public has seen a sequence of stories from establishment opinionmakers that have been, at minimum, hinky, ranging from COVID and its multifold subsidiary embargoes that have proven unnecessary and destructive; to George Floyd, Black Lives Matter, and "mostly peaceful protests"; to January 6 and the many unanswered questions about government provocateurs, deliberately withheld National Guard troops, and mysteriously unexploded pipe bombs.

If there was an effort to conceal from the public the simple question of whether Joe Biden was actually capable of performing in the chief executive role, the metaphorical use of the word "stolen" is entirely appropriate. Biden's increasingly visible struggle just to handle the basics of his job -- for whatever reason -- is a major 2024 issue:

The most pressing political challenge confronting President Joe Biden as he drifts uncontested toward renomination is that which he can do the least about: voters’ profound misgivings about his age and fitness to serve another full term.

Yet what’s striking, and to his allies increasingly unnerving, is Biden’s unwillingness even to try to fully address questions about his capacity to run for reelection next year, when he’ll turn 82.

There's been a mostly unexpressed misgiving over the past four years that Biden was misrepresented, both as a capable executive and as a unifying figure, in the 2020 election, with the outcome "stolen" in the metaphorical sense beyond any need to prove specific electoral fraud. Nor can this misgiving be dismissed as just a conspiracy theory; thre's a significant feeling of discomfort about Biden's occupancy in the White House that 's reflected in a desire, if not to reverse the 2020 election outright, at least to do it over.

This is what's behind the ambiguity in Trump's status as a quasi-incumbent, a sense that if he wasn't duly elected in 2020, by all indications, he should have been, and the 2024 election will be a do-over.

By The Way, Where Is The DC Circuit Court?

Remember this?

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit heard oral arguments Jan. 9 on Trump's broad claim of presidential immunity in the federal election interference case brought by special counsel Jack Smith[.]

This in turn happened because Trump's lawers filed an appeal to the DC Circuit on the basis that a US president is immune from prosecution for official acts while in office. Smith filed a plea with the US Supreme Court asking it to rule immediately on the issue, but the court declined to hear the case before the appeals court ruled. This was generally felt to be a threat to Smith's schedule to begin Trump's January 6 trial on March 4, the day before the Super Tuesday primaries:

The ruling is a scheduling win for Trump and his lawyers, who have sought repeatedly to delay the criminal cases against him as he campaigns to reclaim the White House in 2024. It averts a swift ruling from the nation’s highest court that could have definitively turned aside his claims of immunity, and it further throws into doubt the possibility of the landmark trial proceeding as scheduled on March 4.

The issue will now be decided by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which has signaled it will act quickly to decide the case. Special counsel Jack Smith had cautioned that even a rapid appellate decision might not get to the Supreme Court in time for review and final word before the court’s traditional summer break.

Smith had pressed the Supreme Court to intervene, citing significant public interest in a prompt resolution to the case. The request to leapfrog the appeals court, which Smith himself acknowledged was “extraordinary,” also underscored prosecutors’ concerns that the fight over the issue could delay the start of Trump’s trial beyond next year’s presidential election.

But although the DC Circuit had indicated it would review the case quickly, three weeks after it heard oral arguments, there's been no decision. Even if it rules over the coming week, it will put the tentative March 4 start date for the trial just a little over four weeks away, giving Trump's attorneys grounds to have the trial postponed, epecially since Judge Chutkan was forced to reiterate that no pretrial work could take place while the case was on appeal. So what's going on?

[L]egal analyst Harry Litman was among many experts who had expected a decision by now.

"The delay in the D.C. circuit opinion on immunity is worrisome not just, and not even primarily, because of the passage of days," Litman said. "It’s more because it augurs a divided (Henderson writing separately?) or complicated rationale that could lead to additional delays."

Litman was referring to Republican-appointed judge Karen Henderson, who raised the possibility during oral arguments that the case could be sent back to the trial court to analyze whether Trump's actions could be considered official acts as president — which could impact his immunity claim and possibly delay the trial that's scheduled to start in early March.

In other words, the lawfare strategy of starting a Trump January 6 trial the day before the Super Tuesday primaries was always flawed, and opinions I've read in the past suggest the idea of implementing the plan with indictments in mid-2023, expecting trials to begin before the 2024 election, much less the primary season, was expecting too much from the legal system and never realistic. The whole stretegy should have been put in motion at least a year ahead of 2023 if the Democrats expected it to succeed.

Coverage of Smith's December plea to the Supreme Court, as we see in the links here, carried the implication that Smith was expected to start the trial before Super Tuesday. Although his ability to do this is now seriously in question, even if he's able to bring it off, that part of the plan has been overtaken by events, since Trump effectively put the nomination out of reach for any other candidate in Iowa and New Hampshire, making any later primaries moot.

But observers like Mr Litman had probably been in denial from the time the Supreme Court declined to hear the case. Even if the DC Circuit resoundingly rejects Trump's immunity appeal -- indeed, even if it had done so the day after the January 9 oral arguments -- Trump's attorneys would simply have resumed their appeals, both to the DC Circuit en banc and then to the Supreme Court. As Jack Smith himself pointed out above, "even a rapid appellate decision might not get to the Supreme Court in time for review and final word before the court’s traditional summer break".

Thus at this point the January 6 case under Judge Chutkan, unlikely to begin on March 4 as hoped, is now also unlikely even to get to trial before the November election, by the prosecution's own estimate. This is just one blow to the lawfare strategy, which had initially been to damage Trump's chances in the primaries and promote the nomination of a general-election candidate whom the Democrats might find easier to defeat.

But this leaves aside the problem of the Fulton County trial, whose appearance of legitimacy has been largely destroyed via salacious allegations whatever the eventual outcome for DA Willis. Even here, the likely collapse of these two trials is just a symptom of a bigger set of factors that's giving Trump an advantage in 2024, which I'll go into tomorrow.