CT Blue

So the genius and his offspring have been ordered to appear for depositions in New York. (Just one of many stories here). And, sort of by the way, where does he find these lawyers who don’t seem to be either stable or geniuses?

But I digress.

He’ll appeal, but it’s a state case, so the Supreme Court can’t step in and save him, even if it wanted to, but they’ve got what they want from him and they’ve cut him loose. The state courts will probably make short work of the appeal, and judging by the incompetence of his lawyers (see linked article), it’s unlikely they’ll make a coherent argument, if one actually exists.

But none of this means he’ll ever sit for the deposition. He’s in Florida, and the state of New York doesn’t have the ability to arrest him there and transport him to New York for the deposition. What happens if he doesn’t willingly come? That would be up to the state of Florida.

The constitution has a provision that requires a state to deliver up a person wanted in another state. It reads as follows:

A Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on Demand of the executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime.

While this would appear to mandate said delivery no further questions asked, in fact the states have reserved to themselves the right to determine whether the person demanded should be delivered up. I believe the Supreme Court may have limited that recently, but it remains the case that it will likely be up to Florida to determine if he has to go to New York.

Trump hasn’t been charged with a crime, so I don’t know if the constitutional provision even applies, nor do I know whether there’s some federal statute that may apply. In any event, it will likely ultimately be up to Rick DeSantis to decide whether to force him to New York, which might put DeSantis into a decidedly awkward position. He does want to get re-elected, and I don’t think he can win if he only gets MAGA votes. Then again, he can’t win without them.

Of course Trump can always plead the fifth, but it’s a civil case, and that can be used to raise an adverse inference, which could ultimately lead to the further destruction of the Trump business empire. My own prediction is that he’ll refuse to go to Florida, and DeSantis will protect him. It will be interesting to see what the fallout from all this will be. It should be hard for the press to treat it as simply another example of Trump being Trump, and it puts even more pressure on folks like McConnell to do the impossible by putting distance between themselves and Trump while keeping the MAGA idiots happy. Trump will respond to that as he always does. He doesn’t care about anyone but himself, and if he believes that the Republicans aren’t being sufficiently loyal, he’ll do what he can to destroy them.

Time to repeat myself: If only the Democrats had the ability to turn all this into talking points and use it against the Republicans, but with few exceptions, they don’t.