One trial down. But will there be others?

In this newsletter last week, our colleague Jesse McKinley brought you news of history in the making: Donald Trump’s conviction in Manhattan on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to cover up a hush-money payment to a porn star just before the 2016 election.

This week, we want to look forward a bit and catch up on the state of Trump’s three other criminal cases, which are moving through the courts at a much more leisurely pace. One of them has now stopped moving at all.

Trump, the first former U.S. president to be convicted of a crime, is still facing two federal indictments brought against him by the special counsel Jack Smith. One is in Washington, where he has been charged with illegally attempting to subvert the peaceful transfer of power during the 2020 election. The other is in Florida, where he stands accused of illegally holding on to classified documents after leaving office and obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve them.

Trump is also the lead defendant in a third case in Fulton County, Ga. The proceeding there, brought by the district attorney Fani Willis, is based on sprawling racketeering charges that he conspired with a group of his aides and lawyers to tamper with the results of Georgia’s state election.

All of the cases are bogged down in significant delays. That is in no small part because Trump’s lawyers have filed flurries of motions as part of a deliberate strategy to postpone any trials from taking place for as long as possible.

At this point, it seems likely that the Manhattan case may be the only one of the four to reach a jury before the election in November. And if that happens and Trump regains the White House, it could have enormous consequences for the rule of law.