Many voters say they donā€™t want a convicted felon in the White House. But do they mean it? And can prosecutors get to trial before the vote?

Many voters say they donā€™t want a convicted felon in the White House. But do they mean it? And can prosecutors get to trial before the vote?

Can anything stop former President Donald Trumpā€™s reelection campaign juggernaut, now that Trump has all but crushed his GOP primary opponents and pulled ahead of President Joe Biden in national polls?

While November is a long time away, and plenty could happen before then, voters do say Trump has a massive weakness: A potential criminal conviction. In poll after poll, lots of voters who shrug off Trumpā€™s four indictments say they wouldnā€™t support him if heā€™s convicted of a felony. If they mean itā€”or even if a big chunk of them doā€”they could easily be enough to keep him out of the White House.

What remains to be seen, of course, is whether they mean itā€”and, crucially, whether prosecutors can put Trump on trial in time for the rest of us to find out.

That makes prosecutorsā€™ race against the clock one of the most important narratives of the 2024 election cycle, as teams of lawyers work feverishly around the country to overcome Trumpā€™s efforts to gum up the gears of the judicial system and push the start-date of all his trials past November.

  • ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
    3Ā·
    8 months ago

    But just to avoid being overtechnical, if you want to say Trump raped Carroll, you can accurately say so:

    A judge has now clarified that this is basically a legal distinction without a real-world difference. He says that what the jury found Trump did was in fact rape, as commonly understood.

    The filing from Judge Lewis A. Kaplan came as Trumpā€™s attorneys have sought a new trial and have argued that the juryā€™s $5 million verdict against Trump in the civil suit was excessive. The reason, they argue, is that sexual abuse could be as limited as the ā€œgropingā€ of a victimā€™s breasts.

    Kaplan roundly rejected Trumpā€™s motion Tuesday, calling that argument ā€œentirely unpersuasive.ā€

    ā€œThe finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was ā€˜rapedā€™ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ā€˜rapedā€™ her as many people commonly understand the word ā€˜rape,ā€™ ā€ Kaplan wrote.

    He added: ā€œIndeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.ā€

    Kaplan said New Yorkā€™s legal definition of ā€œrapeā€ is ā€œfar narrowerā€ than the word is understood in ā€œcommon modern parlance.ā€

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/07/19/trump-carroll-judge-rape/