Trump could clinch the nomination before the GOP knows if he’s a felon

By the time Donald Trump is sitting at his federal trial on charges of criminally conspiring to overturn the 2020 election, he may have already secured enough delegates to effectively clinch the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination.

The former president’s trial is scheduled to start March 4, by which point five states are expected to have held nominating contests. The next day, March 5, is Super Tuesday, when 15 states, including delegate-rich California and Texas, plan to hold votes that will determine if any Trump challenger has enough political oxygen to remain a viable alternative.

Primaries in Florida, Ohio and Illinois come two weeks later. Florida and Ohio will be the first winner-take-all contests, in which the top vote-getter statewide seizes all of the delegates rather than splitting them proportionally. Winner-take-all primaries have historically turbocharged the front-runner’s path to the presidential nomination. Trump’s federal trial, if it proceeds on its current timeline, won’t be close to finished by then.

The collision course between the Republican Party’s calendar and Trump’s trial schedule is emblematic of one of the most unusual nominating contests in American history. It is a Trump-dominated clash that will define not only the course of the 2024 presidential primary but potentially the future direction of the party in an eventual post-Trump era.

Trump has complained the March 4 start date of the trial amounts to “election interference” and cited Super Tuesday, but it is likely to have a greater effect on his ability to campaign for primaries in subsequent weeks. About 60% of the delegates will be awarded from contests after Super Tuesday.

Generally, defendants are required to be present in the courtroom at their trials. After preliminary matters such as jury selection, prosecutors in Trump’s election case have estimated they will need about four to six weeks to present their case.

That timeline also means it is likely that a majority of the delegates will have been awarded before a jury determines Trump’s fate.

There are no signs that the party’s leadership is contemplating using Trump’s legal troubles against him. The chairperson of the RNC, Ronna McDaniel, has defended Trump in numerous media appearances and the committee has been raising money by telling online donors that the former president is the victim of a political prosecution.

Now, short of a full capitulation from Trump, removing him as the nominee at the convention after he has secured enough delegates remains an extreme long shot. A surrender by Trump seems highly unlikely given that advisers have said he views getting reelected — and taking command of the pardon power plus control over the Justice Department — as his best insurance policy. Despite Trump’s claims, however, it is not clear that a president can pardon himself, so he might be on safer legal ground if some other Republican secured the nomination, became president and then pardoned him.

Ben Ginsberg, who for decades was among the Republican Party’s top election lawyers before breaking with the party over Trump in 2020, said no amount of delegate machinations would be likely to stop a Trump nomination should he win enough early nominating contests.

“If he wins Iowa and New Hampshire,” Ginsberg said, “I think it’s all over anyway.”

© 2023 The New York Times Company