Will the courts hold Trump accountable before November?
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 5 March 2024
⏱️ 22 minutes
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Summary
Many people had hoped that the highest-profile court cases involving Donald Trump would be resolved before the general election in November. That’s looking increasingly unlikely.
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At the start of the year, it looked as though Donald Trump might be stymied in the courts long before the November election. The former president faced a pair of federal indictments, 91 criminal charges, and challenges to his ballot eligibility in multiple states.
Two months later, says Post national enterprise reporter Sarah Ellison, the federal cases have been slowed to the point where verdicts before November are considered unlikely. And yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled decisively that Trump will remain on the ballot – not just in Colorado, where he had previously been deemed ineligible, but in every state.
As millions of voters in 15 states cast ballots on Super Tuesday, Ellison breaks down what has unfolded in the legal battles around Trump, and where that leaves us ahead of the election.
Today’s show was produced by Elana Gordon, with help from Emma Talkoff. It was mixed by Sean Carter. It was edited by Ted Muldoon. Thank you to Griff Witte.
Correction: A previous version of this episode included a clip in the wrong place, mistakenly implying that it was the Colorado secretary of state speaking. It was the secretary of state of Maine. The audio has been corrected.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I have great respect for the Supreme Court and I want to just thank them for |
| 0:09.0 | working so quickly and so diligently and so brilliantly. |
| 0:17.1 | Yesterday in a speech at Marlago, |
| 0:19.6 | former President Donald Trump praised the Supreme Court for its decision in the case of |
| 0:24.4 | Trump v Anderson. And they can go after me as a politician, they can go after me with |
| 0:30.8 | votes, but they're not going to go after me with that kind of lawsuit |
| 0:35.6 | that takes somebody out of a race who's leading in this case. The court's ruling on |
| 0:40.5 | Monday said they believe Trump should remain on the primary ballot in Colorado, |
| 0:45.6 | despite his role on January 6, 2021. |
| 0:48.8 | This was a decision that overturned a ruling from the Colorado Supreme Court in December that said that Trump was |
| 0:56.1 | disqualified from the ballot in Colorado because of his role in January 6th. |
| 1:02.0 | Sarah Ellison is a national enterprise reporter for the post. |
| 1:06.0 | And the justices said that it has to be Congress and not an individual state to bar someone from appearing on the ballot for |
| 1:16.9 | National Office. |
| 1:19.7 | It's a decision that has huge implications for today, as millions of people around the country |
| 1:27.7 | head to the polls to vote in presidential primaries. |
| 1:31.0 | The Supreme Court came out with this decision in an unusually timed way because |
| 1:35.2 | Super Tuesday is today and they announced this on Monday because the voters |
| 1:40.7 | deserve to know who's going to be on the ballot and whether their vote is going to count. |
| 1:45.0 | This decision has clarified a big question about Trump's eligibility for office. But it also says something |
| 1:55.0 | important about the hopes that many Democrats had pinned on the American |
| 2:00.0 | judicial system in this election cycle. I think broadly when you look at the start of the year, the start of 2024, you have Donald |
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