'Colossal injustice': CNN legal expert gives update on status of Trump criminal cases
Donald Trump won a second term in office despite four criminal indictments, 34 felony convictions and hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties, and CNN's Elie Honig explained how his election win would affect those legal cases.
The president-elect is due to be sentenced later this month for falsifying business records related to his hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, and a judge was expected to hear arguments next month in his federal election interference case, and Honig said those matters were now up in the air after he beat Vice President Kamala Harris.
"We're going to hear a lot of constitutional arguments over the next few weeks and, bottom line, all four cases are done, effectively," Honig said. The two federal cases, Trump said that he's going to fire [special counsel] Jack Smith two minutes into his presidency. He has the power to do it, and his [attorney general] will do do it. That will be a colossal injustice, he will have the power to throw those cases out as president, but the classified documents case and the Jan. 6 case, the fact that he's saying 'I have the power to throw them out, I'll never face a jury' – it's worth reflecting on that."
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"The two state cases are more complicated," Honig continued. "Three weeks from yesterday, Donald Trump is scheduled to be sentenced here in Manhattan on the hush money case, the conviction that he had. It's an interesting dilemma for the judge already, putting aside the fact that Trump is the president-elect, I think it's 50/50 if the judge sends him to prison on that case. The majority of those cases have been non-prison time, but the prosecutors have been saying that this case is worse than normal. What does the judge do? Do you sentence the president-elect to prison? He's not going to prison, even if we have the sentence in a few weeks and the judge sends him to prison, Donald Trump will get bail to appeal and he will almost certainly be given out the opportunity to play out those, and he will be the sitting president by then."
"I've heard people say these state prosecutions can continue while he's in office – no, they can't," Honig added. "Our federalism society will not allow that, and the supremacy clause in the Constitution will not allow that, and the Georgia one was going to sink anyway, circling the drain, and it's not going to happen while he's president. So there's my overview – all four of them are cooked."
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