Trump’s GOP Delegate Hunt Doubles as Legal Strategy in Jan. 6 Case. And Beyond.

In the mind of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, the primary polls and history don’t lie: he’ll be the Republican nominee, and all his major primary rivals will likely drop out after he wins all four early states.

Yet a seeming contradiction underpins Trump’s campaign: Despite the aura of inevitability, he’s laser-focused on winning the remaining primary states as fast as possible. The campaign is methodically planning to amass the delegates awarded in each contest to be officially crowned the party’s nominee at the Republican National Convention from July 15-18.

“Still need to run it out,” Trump told reporters two weeks ago. He said he wouldn’t make the mistake of football coaches who lose winnable games by playing it safe. That is, Trump said, he doesn’t do “prevent defense.”

What Trump didn’t say: he’s planning to go on offense with his convention delegate strategy. And its big targets aren’t his primary rivals.

Instead, he’s aiming at the Democrats trying to block him from the ballot as well as the Democratic state prosecutors and President Joe Biden’s Justice Department who have charged him in an unprecedented four separate criminal cases.

Once Trump wins the majority of delegates, advisers say, it will fuel his argument that the cases against him are partisan “election interference” -- an accusation Democrats deny -- because he will no longer be the theoretical Republican nominee for the White House he’ll be the de facto nominee. That should happen sometime between March 12 and March 19, when internal campaign calculations indicate he’ll have won more than the 1,215 delegates to secure the GOP post.

March just so happens to be the month when two of his criminal cases are scheduled to go to trial. With an eye on the legal calendar, Trump’s team quietly worked with state parties months ago to move up their primaries and change delegate-awarding thresholds to help him secure the nomination faster in March.

The most notable state: California, which has the biggest delegate haul of 169 and which votes on Super Tuesday, March 5. The day before, Trump is scheduled to go on federal trial in Washington D.C. in the Jan. 6 case.

“I believe Trump is already the nominee, but when he gets the official delegates, the Democrats will have no more excuses for why they are trying to kick him off the ballot. They will have to admit what we already know: Trump is the nominee and they're trying to persecute the leader of the political opposition,” Ric Grenell, a Trump confidant, surrogate and former acting director of National Intelligence during Trump’s presidency, told The Messenger.

‘Lawyers are paying attention’

On Wednesday, special counsel Jack Smith asked the judge in the Jan. 6 case to keep Trump's political arguments from court.

"The Court should not permit the defendant to turn the courtroom into a forum in which he propagates irrelevant disinformation, and should reject his attempt to inject politics into this proceeding," Smith said in his filing. "To ensure that the jury remains focused on its fact-finding duty and applies the law as instructed by the Court, the defendant's improper evidence and argument should be excluded."

Even if he can't raise his political arguments in court, Trump wants to use the bully pulpit to shape the potential jury pool and influence judges because, advisers say, he sees a close link beteen the courts of public opinion and law. The confluence of political messaging and legal arguments illustrate their overlap to Trump, underscored by the minute attention to detail his presidential campaign and squad of lawyers have obsessed over for months as the court cases stacked up. The indictments of Trump ironically improved his political standing in the primary and now he hopes that securing his nomination in the primary will improve his legal standing in court.

“The lawyers are paying attention to delegates. The campaign is paying attention to the cases. We have to,” said a source familiar with the discussions who was not authorized to speak on the record. “There’s a difference between a likely nominee and actually being the one who is the nominee with the majority of delegates. That fact will find its way to court.”

So far, Trump has repeatedly raised the issue of his candidacy in court with little success. He ultimately views the cases through a political lens and, sources say, he believes the U.S. Supreme Court will be more sympathetic to him because its Republican majority will ultimately see political motivations underpinning the two federal indictments against him: the Jan. 6 election subversion case and the classified documents case.

Trump has told others that he has more confidence in the judge overseeing the classified documents case, Aileen Cannon -- whom he appointed – than he does with the judge presiding in the Jan. 6 trial, Tanya Chutkan, who was appointed by his White House predecessor, Barack Obama.

‘Tremendous pressure’

Two issues -- concerning presidential immunity and obstructing Congress from certifying the election -- are working through the appeals process that could gut the Jan. 6 case against Trump. If the justices don’t ultimately rule in his favor, Trump wants the high court to take its time, delaying the trial date until after the election because, if he’s elected president, Trump’s Department of Justice will either cancel the charges against him or he’ll pardon himself.

Absent that, Trump wants the trials to be closer to the election, sources say.

“The closer to the election this gets, the more pressure there is and the more people will see the politics,” said another source with knowledge of Trump’s legal thinking. "Judge Chutkan said she doesn’t care about Trump’s status as a candidate. This hasn’t worked. But if that trial date moves, will she be so steadfast in pursuit of a verdict and ignore the reality of an impending election? What does Jack Smith do?”

Compared to Jan. 6, Trump has expressed less concern about the Georgia state election interference case and the New York business fraud case tied to hush money payments he made to porn star Stormy Daniels with whom he allegedly had an affair. The latter case is scheduled for March 24.

The Supreme Court recently handed a small victory to Trump by denying Smith’s request that it take up the presidential immunity case before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Former federal prosecutor Mitch Epner, who’s not involved in any of the cases, said Chutkan has a solid legal basis for ignoring Trump’s political argument because “even if Donald Trump is the officially nominated candidate after the convention, there is no special constitutional status for a nominee seeking an elected office. But it doesn’t matter to Trump. Trump is not constrained by the truth. And he’s certainly not constrained by legal niceties.”

Epner said, however, that judges “are loathe to intrude on the political process, not as a matter of law but as a matter of effective argument. The more that Trump can make the argument the more likely it is that judges could cite it in their opinions or be motivated to rule in his favor that is legally cognizable.”

Rick Wilson, leader of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, said Trump is a criminal who deserves to be charged and convicted, but he said Trump has displayed a style of brinksmanship that confounds predictions.

“The Justice Department could end up under tremendous pressure from others and even internally once Trump becomes the nominee de facto or de jure. We are in terra incognita,” he said. “The strategy of harvesting as many delegates as quickly as possible isn’t about winning the nomination at this point, it’s to tell the Department of Justice and the courts that he’s now the nominee and claim this is all political.”

Wilson said he doesn't believe Trump will be successful in court, but the arguments will help Trump “raise his money and excite his people.”

'Insurrection' trouble

On Thursday, Maine's Democratic secretary of state kicked Trump off the ballot in a decision that echoed the all-Democrat Colorado Supreme Court's 4-3 to do the same, arguing Trump is an ineligible candidate under the 14^th Amendment’s insurrection clause because of his role in the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot. California, which Trump is relying on to help him secure the majority of delegates early in March is also considering whether to strike him from the ballot.

The Colorado GOP is appealing the state decision to the U.S. Supreme Court and Trump, for now, will be on the state's primary ballot. The case only appeared to solidify his Republican support. One of his major rivals in the primary, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, bemoaned that the state court's decision was part of a Democratic conspiracy to make Trump seem more electable in the primary but damaged goods in the general election against Biden. DeSantis also groused that the indictments of Trump “distorted the primary.”

Roger Stone, a longtime Trump confidant, said Republicans see the “lawfare” against Trump and they’ll rally further to his side once he’s the nominee, which will make the cases against him harder to prosecute before the election.

“Today, he’s the theoretical nominee, given his historic and overwhelming lead in the polls,” Stone said. “But by early March, he will be the de facto nominee with enough delegates to be nominated. And at that point, it becomes even more abundantly clear that all these legal cases against him are political persecution. They're politically motivated.”

Joe Trippi, a longtime Democratic operative, disagrees. He said the criminal cases pose a threat to Trump’s standing even in his party, but being the de facto nominee could help inoculate him.

“There is a significant number of Republicans who say they would not vote for him if he’s convicted. These are people who are voting for him now but say they won’t if he’s convicted,” Trippi said. “He has a better chance of keeping them if he is the official nominee prior to any conviction and probably a better argument that helps keep them. And even a better argument with swing voters that he is the nominee of a major party they should decide - not the courts.”

Trippi added he doesn’t believe it will work with swing voters, “but as usual with Trump, it helps inflame his base if it doesn’t work with anyone else.”