No. of Recommendations: 3
No normal human citizen would be capable of obtaining this level of delay to what should be open and shut cases.
I think this explains why some folks are so frustrated about this. Because it's completely wrong.
It's easy to delay judicial proceedings if you are willing to pay money to lawyers to do it. There's so many opportunities to raise points of procedure, try to depose more witnesses, etc. I'm not personally a litigator, but I'm frequently in meetings with my clients and our litigation team when they're trying to discuss options. It's almost trivial to drag out cases for years and years. Even in criminal cases, if you want to slow down the case and are willing to pay for the legal services that will do it, anyone can stretch things out.
It's barely been a year since the indictment was filed. It's not all that surprising that the case hasn't gone to trial yet. To give a few examples from famous cases, Elizabeth Holmes was indicted in June 2018, and didn't go to trial until July 2020. Kenneth Lay (of Enron fame) was indicted in July 2004; his trial didn't start until January 2006. Harvey Weinstein was indicted in May of 2018, and didn't go to trial until February 2020. And none of those cases presented any especially novel types of legal issues, the way that prosecuting a former President inevitably does.
It's not wrong to be frustrated that Trump won't be tried before the election, but honestly that was kind of baked in once Jack Smith and Fani Willis waited until August 2023 to obtain their indictments. There was always a good chance that the prosecutors wouldn't be able to get into court before the election. Even if the defendant isn't especially trying to delay for delay's sake, it's not all that unusual for a complicated case against a well-lawyered defendant to take more than a year to get to trial.
