In a discussion on CNN that he later highlighted on X (Twitter), attorney Norm Eisen said that trial proceedings against former President Donald Trump can move forward close to this year’s elections without violating Justice Department practice. (Eisen helped handle the House’s first impeachment case against Trump, among other roles.)
He was referring to the department’s standard of restricting investigative activity close to elections. For the bulk of proceedings against Trump that should, per current expectations, result in a pair of trials, investigations are done. “DOJ has a rule: you can’t take investigative steps, investigative steps, 60 days before an election. But where the investigative steps have already been taken, you can proceed with the case. That case is going to be switched back on over the summer,” Eisen said, referring to the criminal case against Trump that covers his post-2020 election attempts to stay in power despite losing to Biden.
Trump continues to claim that legal hurdles he is facing, including the criminal proceedings across four cases, reflect an attempt at election interference broadly tracing to President Joe Biden. There is no evidence of direct involvement in the proceedings by Biden. In fact, prosecutors in one case alleging criminal attempts at election interference said they’d quit if Biden were involved. Biden “has no role in this case, and the career prosecutors handling this matter would not participate in this prosecution if it were otherwise,” they said in a court filing.
Eisen, meanwhile, concurrently predicted failure for the arguments that Trump has been making for wide-ranging protections from even the possibility of criminal prosecution over actions a president takes amid their responsibilities, an area where Trump groups what he was doing after the 2020 race in trying to stay in the presidency. The Trump team’s vision is wide-ranging to the point a lawyer for the former president left open the possibility in courtroom arguments of a president ordering a political assassination and somehow evading criminal consequences. Following those arguments from Trump, a decision from an appeals court panel in D.C. remains forthcoming.
