Clockwise from top left: This image, contained in the indictment against former President Donald Trump, shows boxes of records stored in a bathroom and shower in the Lake Room at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla. Undated. (Justice Department via AP); Rioters loyal to President Donald Trump rally at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File); Adult film actress Stormy Daniels speaks outside federal court on April 16, 2018, in New York. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File); The indictment in Georgia against former President Donald Trump is photographed Monday, Aug. 14, 2023. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick). Inset center: Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally Saturday, March 16, 2024, in Vandalia, Ohio. (AP Photo/Jeff Dean)

With hundreds of millions of dollars leaving his bank accounts and the threat of his first criminal trial and others to follow still very much lurking on the horizon, Donald Trump has been doggedly consistent in every venue he faces indictment to force a delay. And if you ask Eric Columbus, a former litigator with the House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol, the reason for that is crystal clear.

“If he loses the election, then there’s really only so far he can go in terms of delaying,” Columbus said in a phone interview with Law&Crime on Friday. “The question is whether we’re going to see a trial before the election. It is possible. If I had to wager, I would say its maybe just a little less than likely.”

Oral arguments at the Supreme Court to resolve whether Trump has immunity from criminal prosecution get underway in exactly a month come Monday and a week before, the court will hear arguments in Fischer v. United States, a Jan. 6 case that could have a huge impact on whether Trump’s criminal charges in Washington, D.C., for allegedly conspiring to subvert the 2020 election, will stick or be limited in some way.

“There are some reasons to question the ability of special counsel to proceed if that case comes out in Trump’s favor,” Columbus remarked.

A case, or in Trump’s situation, cases, “of this nature” don’t come along very frequently,” he remarked.

So, what would need to happen for trial to proceed to a verdict before the election, whether it was one in Florida, New York, Georgia or Washington, D.C.?

There’s a “strange possibility a trial could begin before the election but still be going on when the election occurs,” Columbus surmised.

“That’s theoretically possible even with a decision that comes down [on immunity] in late June,” he said. “Its possible they could split the baby and say he doesn’t have absolute presidential immunity but that it is partial immunity depending on what the presidential action is. They could do that in a way that could require [U.S. District] Judge [Tanya] Chutkan, when it gets back to her, to do additional work which could then be appealed itself, so it could be tied up for a while and prevent the weirdness of having a trial beginning but not ending before the election.”

Weighing in on the case in Washington, D.C., Trump is so desperate to cast off, Columbus said he fully expects Trump’s lawyers will try to argue to jurors: “Look, you may not disagree with what Trump did or you may think it was despicable and an act of a sore loser trying to stir up trouble, but it was not a crime and it doesn’t fit easily into these boxes designed to capture criminal behavior. You may even think it should be a crime, but unless and until congress makes it one, you are obligated to acquit my client.”

As to Trump’s classified documents case in Florida, things are murky and especially this week in the wake of two proposed jury instructions Columbus called “very puzzling.”

“It continues to rest on this notion that Trump has been prattling on about; that somehow, the Presidential Records Act limits the application of the Espionage Act … but one has nothing to do with the other. The PRA passed in wake of Nixon and no one has thought it had anything to do with classified documents. PRA was intended to reduce the ability of presidents to abscond with their records, to make it harder. With Nixon, they had to buy his records off of him and PRA made it so you can’t dot that, basically. “The idea that. without ever saying so, the legislation “somehow gave the president a new right to walk away with classified records if he somehow declared them to be personal is just ludicrous,” he said.

“Trump is making these arguments because he’s not the best strategist and he also doesn’t really have great arguments on the merits. But the idea that Judge Cannon is, as evidenced by that ruling, somehow entertaining those rulings is disturbing.”