Slow wheels of justice will not outpace campaign
Is Stormy Daniels a sex-positive, entrepreneurial figure? Or is Donald Trump’s accuser, in the first of a run of legal cases, cashing in on an alleged brief encounter with a famous man? Two reputations are fighting it out in the New York courtroom. Daniels looked as if she could be auditioning for a part in her own Erin Brockovich-style biopic.
She was a tousled figure in specs and scraped-back hair, and shot straight about the economic advantages of working as an exotic dancer after a previous job mucking out stables: “I could make more in two nights than I did shovelling manure eight hours a day”.
Another way to pursue and turn a profit, according to Trump’s defence, was accepting hush money to keep quiet about her charge of a sexual encounter, which the former president’s legal team have presented as a sign of opportunism and unreliability.
Court cases involving senior politicians and sexual encounters are a lively staple of American life, and where there is Donald Trump in comeback mode, there will certainly be drama and absurdity.
What is far less certain is whether this showdown will make much difference at all.
The assumption that a wave of prosecutions could deliver a blow to the former president’s prospects has looked more threadbare as the New York trial marches portentously onwards.
Talking to the Power Play podcast this week, Kevin McCarthy – the former speaker of the House of Representatives, who had an ambivalent relationship with Trump over the events of 6 January 2021 but is now formally back in his corner – said that he thought the trial and other legal cases were a distraction.
Those who avidly dislike Trump will see in them a pattern of conduct that vindicates their view that he is unfit for office. Republican voters will believe he is being hounded, and waverers will get lost in the legal procedures and switch off.
This may also be the one time the American public sees Trump – who sat scowling, chin-jutting and immovable in the courtroom earlier this week like a very cross Mount Rushmore figure – facing trial.
The trial he faces in Florida, on charges that he hoarded classified secrets at his Mar-a-Lago estate after his presidency, is indefinitely postponed, while the Georgia appeals court has also agreed to postpone a hearing into whether his allies attempted to meddle with Joe Biden’s 2020 win in the state.
The New York case looks like the least substantial one, and right now the idea that public opinion can be diverted away from supporting Trump, on the grounds that the legal pile-up shows his perfidy, looks far-fetched.
Trump’s lawyers are masters of procrastination. The US court system is in part politicised (the Florida delay is the result of a Trump appointee moving at snail’s pace through pre-trial detail) but it is also hard to drive through legal cases against the clock.
The wheels of justice turn slowly and expensively, so his campaign is anxious about what defending him is costing. In terms of the battle for the White House, however, the months are ticking by.
The New York showdown between two very odd protagonists is riveting to watch. But in terms of who will run America after the November election it’s a sideshow.
Where there is Donald Trump in comeback mode, there will be drama and absurdity