Nikki Haley's chances of defeating Donald Trump after losing Iowa and New Hampshire are slim. Slim might be an understatement. Her path to victory would be totally non-existent if her opponent was a traditional career Republican politician. However, because the Republican caucus goers in Iowa and primary voters in New Hampshire delivered victories to Donald Trump of all people, she still has a chance for the mere fact that there remains a very real possibility that Donald Trump will be convicted of crimes that will force him to serve serious prison time. If Donald Trump is convicted and sent to prison before the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee starting on July 15, the RNC might change its bylaws to allow his delegates to vote for another candidate. Although Nikki Haley won't WIN any states (unless he is convicted prior to the last primaries), she will still accumulate many more delegates than Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy. If her delegates remain locked to her in this situation, Nikki Haley's path to victory at the convention is almost certain.

The problem is that Donald Trump's legal teams have been delaying these trials every step of the way with varying degrees of success.

Georgia Racketeering Case in Jeopardized By Democrat Sex Scandal

Furthermore, Democrats have bungled the Georgia interference case in a way that may be irreparable. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' apparent extramarital affair with Trump Prosecutor Nathan Wade has cast doubt onto the entire case against all of the defendants. Furthermore, their refusal to deny the allegations AND their refusal to recuse themselves has virtually guaranteed an immediate appeal will be heard if the case even makes it to the jury; ensuring Trump will not be in prison before Inauguration Day 2025, let alone the Republican National Convention this summer. A conviction without prison time in this case will do nothing to convince Republicans not to nominate Trump as most Republicans still believe the election in Georgia was stolen (myself included), and that this trial is just Democrats trying to cover their tracks with misdirection of blame.

Washington, D.C. January 6th Election Subversion Case

As expected, Trump's has successfully managed to delay this trial. Originally scheduled to begin March 4th, the Trump Team argued the President of the United States; which he was at the time; should make him immune from these criminal prosecutions. The Judge said no. The Trump Team then appealed that decision to a Federal Appeals Court. Knowing the loser in the Appeals Court case will appeal that decision to the Supreme Court, Special Prosecutor Jack Smith asked the Supreme Court to make a ruling immediately without waiting for the Federal Appeals court to make their decision. Just before Christmas 2023, the Supreme Court said they would weigh in before ruling comes from the Federal Appeals Court. This means the Supreme Court likely won't hear the case in their current term (October 2023 - June or July 2024), possibly pushing the Supreme Court decision back to 2025 and a verdict to later that year or 2026.

Even if the trial is held, the defense has a pretty solid case as Donald Trump CLEARLY said to the protesters on January 6th, "I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard today." Trump also offered to reinforce the Capitol Police with the National Guard; which Nancy Pelosi ignored. If his goal was to storm the Capitol, he wouldn't have offered the National Guard to defend it; and he wouldn't have told the protesters to be peaceful. The case against former President Trump here is about as weak as it would be if their only witness was Cassidy Hutchinson; whose fantastical stories were perfectly suited for her book; which belongs in every Democrat's library of erotic political fiction.

If convicted, Team Trump will immediately appeal the trial; which will almost certainly be heard simply because of the evidence supporting the former President. That same evidence will justify every Republican delegate who intends to vote for Trump, even if they are freed to vote for Haley or DeSantis.

Mar-a-Lago Classified Documents Case

The only other case where Donald Trump could face prison time is the Mar-a-Lago Documents scandal. As I said when the charges were filed in June 2023, the charges against Trump here are very serious as they deal with National Security. Those charges SHOULD have been filed by the DOJ before November 2022; but the morally bankrupt Biden Department of "Justice" chose to wait so that Republicans wouldn't have the facts of the case before the primary. The easiest way to guarantee Biden's re-election in 2024 is to let Republicans nominate Trump without the knowledge of the full scope of his crimes; then send him to prison after he locks up the nomination.

However, even though I suspect Trump is insanely guilty and deserving of prison, his conviction is not guaranteed. The US District Judge assigned to the case is Aileen Cannon; who was appointed to the job by Donald Trump in November of 2020. Democrats are convinced she'll be too friendly towards Trump; which is somewhat ironic because they have no problem with the Russiagate Lawsuit against Hillary Clinton being thrown out by a Bill Clinton-Appointed judge. If Donald Trump catches the same break that Hillary Clinton got with Russiagate in 2022, Republicans are likely to view it as sweet justice; but it would just be a continuation of the miscarriage of justice in this country that too heavily favors the ruling elite. Furthermore, the judge throwing the case out will be one more nail in the Haley Presidential Campaign's coffin.

To her credit, when Trump's legal team requested the case be delayed from the May trial date; Judge Cannon denied the motion, keeping the May 20th trial date. Although she said she would entertain a delay again on March 1st, if the trial date and schedule stick, there's a very real chance the verdict would be read and sentencing complete prior to GOP National Convention. However, every delay will make it more and more difficult to resolve this trial before the Convention.

Stormy Daniels Hush Money Trial

Allegedly, Donald Trump authorized his former attorney and fixer Michael Cohen (the man who paid off Mr. & Mrs. Jerry Falwell Jr.'s Miami pool boy to secure the former's endorsement of President Trump at Liberty University) to use funds from Donald Trump's 2016 political campaign to pay off porn star Stormy Daniels and have her sign a non-disclosure agreement about their extramarital affair. This apparently breaks the rule about using political campaign funds for personal purposes.

I don't know how many people are allegedly involved in this scandal, but seeing as how 2016 was both Trump and Cohen's first political campaign, it's not unreasonable to think they didn't know they couldn't do this. Donald Trump surrounds himself with lawyers who SHOULD have known better, but campaign finance law was probably new to them and, obviously, they wanted to keep this quiet and didn't share it with the entire legal team. This was not an intentional violation of election law and, if guilty, likely won't result in prison time for the former President. Whatever lawyers were involved deserve a slap on the wrist more than Donald Trump in this case.

Honestly, I'm not even sure this should be a violation of campaign finance law. Melania Trump was a porn model herself before she had an extramarital affair with Donald Trump and eventually married him. While I don't think Donald Trump would have bragged about his sexual escapades with Stormy Daniels to her, I don't think Melania is why he chose to pay the hush money. Clearly, he didn't want Stormy Daniels coming forward in late October and giving a detailed account of their affair just before the 2016 election. More than anything else, I think it's fair to say he used the money to pay her off for the sake of his Presidential Campaign. Adultery (unfortunately) isn't illegal in the United States anymore, so it's not like he was covering up a crime.

At the very worst, I think Donald Trump will likely end up paying a steep fine; but if his legal team realistically expects him to do prison time, they'll delay sentencing until long after the general election. The DETAILS of this case should have sunk Donald Trump in Iowa (and should sink him in South Carolina), but all of the Republican candidates were too afraid to talk about this in the kind of detail Republican voters needed to hear about in Iowa to change the outcome of the primary.

Civil Lawsuits

While the criminal cases against Trump could potentially land the former President in prison, the civil cases are just a distraction and won't have much of an impact in the Republican nominating process since most Republicans at this point just assume the District Attorneys and Prosecutors have already rigged the legal proceedings against the former President; and they're not entirely wrong, either.

These cases won't help Nikki Haley steal this nomination from Donald Trump. She needs Donald Trump to go to prison before the GOP National Convention, and that's extremely unlikely to happen.

Status of My Endorsement

As I stated last month, I'll endorse Donald Trump on this blog as soon as he picks a conservative running mate or at least someone exciting that promises to make things interesting.