🗡️ 🛡️ 💸

Trump and his codefendants are going to be spending months at trial. (The billable hours per attorney will be astounding.) I just can't see how Trump can campaign given the time requirements, and I don't in anyway support delaying the trial for the convenience of a defendant campaigning. With good counsel and a cooperative defendant, it's certainly possible that Trump could be acquitted. The RICO charge is very complicated and difficult for most people to understand. The jury instructions on RICO stretched well over an hour, and I had the benefit of a legal education to parse what was being asked of the jury. Even with that, we ended up requesting the instructions be read a second time just so everyone on the jury was satisfied that they understood what we were deciding. With so many elements need for a conviction, it's possible for good counsel to convince the jury that the prosecution came up short on even one required element. In short, even an acquittal will take many months of actual court time.

How many of those attorneys will Trump be paying for? Some? None? It doesn’t matter, this is just a thought experiment. He’s paying for his lawyers and two other defendants in Florida. He’s paying lawyers in New York and in D.C. Sure, there’s some overlap, but billables are billables. It’s not just the number of lawyers, it’s the number of hours that are worked.

And nothing generates more billable hours than a trial. Trump is facing four trials. And the odds of him escaping from even one are pretty much zip and none.

I still say he runs out of money. His fundraising is going to dry up even as he spends more and more time in court. He’s spent all his money already on lawyers (all the money he’s raised, I mean), and he hasn’t faced one trial, yet. His real legal expenses haven’t begun.