Trump’s latest ploy to delay trials is to cry ‘election interference’, DoJ veterans say

Claims by Donald Trump and his lawyers that holding any of the four criminal trials he now faces before the US election in November would be “election interference” lack a solid legal basis and are brazen ploys to delay trials until post election, former justice department officials say.

As he campaigns to return to the White House, Trump is facing unprecedented legal and political perils: trials are pending in four federal and state jurisdictions, where he’s been charged with 91 felony counts including 17 about conspiring with allies to overturn his loss to Joe Biden in 2020.

To thwart any damaging verdicts and negative trial coverage pre-election, the former US president and his lawyers have pushed legal and political arguments by invoking election interference and presidential immunity, as they’ve sought to convince judges and courts to postpone trial dates until after November.

Trump’s drive to have trials held post-election is premised heavily on hopes of winning the presidency again, and then telling DoJ to kill the federal charges, say DoJ veterans.

So far, crying election interference in order to postpone trials until after election day hasn’t achieved much, but his tenuous claims of absolute immunity for all his actions as president have succeeded in pushing back some key trial dates this year in tactical wins for Trump.

Presently, Trump is due to stand trial on 25 March in New York where he faces 34 felony counts from Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg who is charging he falsified business records to conceal payments of hush money in 2016 to porn star Stormy Daniels who alleged an affair with Trump.

After Bragg charged him last spring, Trump told a gathering at Mar-a-Lago that the New York case and the three