#state charges

In New York, he'd be retried over and over until a unanimous verdict is reached, guilty or not guilty, however long that takes, and every state level Republican candidate from now on will campaign on promises to drop the charges or pardon him or help him in some way, shape, or form.

In Georgia (he hasn't been indicted yet, but it's coming), he's going to be pardoned almost immediately. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if he gets pardoned before it even goes to trial. Yeah, the governor refused to find 11,000 votes for him, but he's still a Republican and trump is still the leader of his party. If he didn't pardon trump, he would be crucified by his voters and shamed out of office, and his successor would pardon him instead. If he stood his ground and couldn't be bullied into resigning, then just as in New York every Republican candidate would run on the pardon promise platform. Trump will NEVER face justice in Georgia.

In the federal case in Florida, a mistrial means the judge, a trump appointee, could drop the charges and prevent the DOJ from retrying it. Best case scenario, it would get delayed into 2025 or 2026 and a different judge in the southern district of Florida will be randomly assigned to it, but that's assuming Biden wins re-election in 2024. If trump wins, he'd immediately pardon himself, or invoke the 25th to have his loyalist VP pardon him to avoid a Supreme Court decision on a self-pardon's validity. If Biden wins, the 2028 Republican candidates will all run on promises to pardon him, so he'll be out of prison the second the White House goes red. I don't trust Democrats to hold the line long enough for him to die in prison.

The federal case in Washington, DC looks open and shut, the best chance for a conviction. Trump only has four appointees in that district, so the odds of him getting off on a retrial in case of a hung jury are 4 in 13, 30.77% (4/15, 26.67% if Biden can fill the two remaining vacancies). Again, all this does is kick the can down the road until 2025 or 2026. He will walk free whenever the Republicans take back power.

People really should take a moment to understand that State and Federal charges in the U.S. are not the same, that the offenses are different and accountable to different legal entities / procedures. U.S. legal code and NY State legal code are separate and distinct.

Murder charges in particular typically are State charges; the governing statutes often read differently from one State to the next. It's why, ex., someone may be charged with Murder vs. Manslaughter, or First vs. Third degree -- the charges are not about severity but the nature of the crime given the statutes in place in the State where the crime occurred. If (ex.) you want to understand why the terrorism charge was applied to the Manhattan DA's indictment, you need to look at NY State criminal statute.

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The Manhattan district attorney formally charged him last week with multiple counts of murder, including murder as an act of terrorism, in a state case that will run parallel to his federal prosecution.

The federal charges could carry the possibility of the death penalty, while the maximum sentence for the state charges is life in prison without parole. Prosecutors have said the two cases will proceed on parallel tracks, with the state charges expected to go to trial first.

One of Donald Trump’s final acts as president was to pardon his former campaign manager Steve Bannon, a man who defrauded Trump supporters in a scam to fund the disgraced ex-president’s border wall.

But new reporting on Tuesday night revealed that Bannon could ultimately face state charges, rendering Trump’s eleventh-hour pardon useless.

WASHINGTON | Trump on Manafort pardon: ‘I wouldn’t take it off the table’

WASHINGTON — A pardon for Paul Manafort is “not off the table,” President Donald Trump said, drawing swift rebuke from critics who fear the president will use his executive power to protect friends and supporters caught up in the Russia probe.

The president’s discussion of a possible pardon in an interview Wednesday with the New York Post came days after special counsel Robert Mueller said…