Two Crucial 2024 Presidential Election Questions That Require Honest Answers

Can Donald Trump get a fair trial? Not in New York City or D.C. he can’t.

We are just five weeks into the election year and it is already hard to keep up with the state of play. With nine months to go before Americans decide who will lead our country for the next four years, two absolutely crucial questions have risen to the top that require honest answers. The first question comes on the heels of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report on Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents. That question generates a sub-question, so I should have titled this piece "two-and-a-half questions," but it doesn’t have the same ring to it as just two.

At any rate, the first question is: does Biden possess the mental acuity to not just serve out the remainder of his first term, but, more pointedly, to serve ANOTHER four years at which point he will be 86-years-old? I won’t rehash Hur’s report, but it was unequivocal on what Hur believed was the state of Biden’s mental acuity. Hur believes he could not charge Biden with a crime that he thinks Biden committed because a jury wouldn’t convict an old man with severe memory issues. As the White House and Democrats reacted with scorn claiming Biden was totally with it, many pointed out the obvious "rock and hard place” such a defense puts Biden; namely, if his memory is great, then Hur should indict Biden and try him and if it isn’t, then he must be removed from office.

Either way, 86% of Americans don’t believe Biden can serve as President for another four years. Thus, Biden will either get out of the race voluntarily or voters will send him back to Delaware at noon on January 20, 2025.

By the way, did you see the whiplash on the Left which denounced Donald Trump and the Right when they had the audacity to critize Special Counsel Robert Mueller (really hyperpartisan hack Andrew Weissmann given Mueller’s own poor mental acuity), but rapidly began assaulting Hur without hesitation?

Hur’s report raised a secondary question (the half question). Given that Biden took classified documents without the power to declassify that Trump as president possessed AND given that Biden took far more classified documents than Trump took with him to Mar-a-Lago AND given that Biden stored all of the classified documents in unsecure locations, including haphazardly in his garage, compared to Trump storing documents in locked rooms with Secret Service agents always present AND given that Biden willfully shared classified documents with others, including his ghostwriter, as Trump did not, if Biden is getting a pass for violating the laws far more egregiously, how can Jack Smith’s documents case against Trump go forward? Just like with the lack of prosecution against Hillary Clinton for intentionally using an unsecure email system that contained lots of classified documents and then obstructed justice by destroying evidence of her crime, the case against Trump MORE THAN EVER NOW smacks of two standards of justice depending on your political party. If you are a Democrat, the system will find a way to let you off the hook. If you are a Republican, however, the system will move mountains to take you down.

Whether Smith et al. realize it or not, the continued prosecution of Trump on the documents issue will only help Trump in the election, as a majority of Americans believe the fix is in. Even if he is convicted, Americans will discount the weight they give that conviction.

All of this madness leads to the second vital question: can Trump get a fair trial? The Left and their media sycophants like to dismiss this question out-of-hand, but in every case except the Florida case, Trump is facing partisan, left-wing judges in not just highly Democrat cities, but extremely highly Democrat cities—New York City and Washington, D.C. The former voted against Trump 76% to 23% and the latter 92% to 5% in 2020 (and 79% to 19% and 91% to 4% in 2016). To put those enormous percentages in context, nationally, Biden beat Trump 51% to 47% and Clinton beat Trump 48% to 46% (but lost the Electoral Vote 304 to 227). In the states, Biden’s biggest win was in Vermont where he won 66% to 31%, with Clinton’s biggest win coming in Hawaii 62% to 30%. The severe slant of New York City and D.C. voters is EXACTLY why cases have been brought against Trump in those locations AND why the judges are refusing to allow the cases to be tried in less biased jurisdictions.

The Constitution guarantees every defendant under the Sixth Amendment the right to a "speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury.” Is trying Trump in inherently politicized cases in jurisdictions in which impartiality is deeply in question adhering to the Constitution? As we’ve seen with every 1/6er indictment and trial, the judges and juries involved in those cases are anything but impartial. The U.S. Supreme Court is already looking at how the U.S. Department of Justice is using section 1512 to string up 1/6ers (and Trump) and likely will be determining the issue of presidential immunity. I suspect as the cases against Trump proceed, the Supreme Court will have to wrestle with additional constitutional questions including whether New York City and D.C. juries are impartial as required by the Constitution and whether the speed with which the prosecutors are trying to try the case against Trump based solely on getting convictions BEFORE the election is proper. After all, the right to a speedy trial is a DEFENDANT’S right which he can assert to ensure he isn’t held for long periods of time without being tried. It is NOT a prosecutor’s right to push so he can get a conviction before an election happens.

One notable tell that the prosecutors KNOW Trump can’t get a fair trial in New York City or D.C. is when they OPPOSE motions to change venues to less biased jurisdictions. If the prosecutors thought their cases were strong enough to get a conviction in front of “an impartial jury,” they would agree to venue changes. They know they have a big advantage by keeping the cases in jurisdictions that voted so heavily against Trump. That fact alone should be a massive red flag for the Supreme Court when the cases finally arrive on its doorstep. As a former litigator who tried (and won) several cases, I know firsthand how the system is designed to ensure both sides get the most balanced, impartial jury the system can provide. 

The only positive fact for Trump is that in the criminal cases he just needs one juror to have reasonable doubt to gain acquittals. The problem for Trump in finding that juror is that the prosecutors can use the three preemptive challenges they get to strike the jurors they believe might be pro-Trump. With the odds of possible jurors in New York City being that nine out of twelve jurors will be Democrats and that eleven out of twelve jurors in D.C. will be Democrats, the prosecutors' three preemptive challenges should be more than enough to get a stacked jury against Trump. 

Thus, can Trump get a fair trial? Not in New York City or D.C. he can’t.

P.S. Read this report by the American College of Pediatricians on the “Mental Health in Adolescent with Incongruence of Gender Identity and Biological Sex.” Here is my tweet on it.