A Changed Landscape

As Donald Trump heads to Milwaukee next week for the Republican National Convention — the high point so far of his re-election campaign — the threat he is facing from his four criminal cases has reached what appears to be a low point.

It wasn’t so long ago that Trump confronted a daunting prospect: showing up to accept his party’s nomination for president with perhaps two criminal convictions and possibly a prison sentence hanging around his neck.

But while a jury found him guilty this spring of 34 felony counts in Manhattan, he won’t face punishment for any of those crimes until at least two months from now and seems all but certain to avoid going to trial in any of his three other cases until well after the election in November.

All of that has freed Trump to use the nearly weeklong convention as a launchpad for an election campaign aimed at a second term, where he will denounce what he claims is the “weaponization” of government against him.

While Trump is still facing gag orders that restrict what he can say about some of the participants in his cases, he is headed to Wisconsin feeling bullish about his chances of eventually defeating the indictments brought against him or having the federal cases he is facing dismissed,if he wins the election.

His success so far in fending off the most dire legal consequences is largely a result of his persistent strategy of seeking to delay his cases for as long as possible and the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling this month granting him broad immunity for acts he took in his official role as president.