Rachel Maddow Predicts Two Ways Trump's Federal Case Ends

Television host Rachel Maddow has laid out two of the most likely outcomes she can foresee Donald Trump's criminal case ending. Both of these involve the former president avoiding jail and any significant consequences.

On Tuesday, Trump pleaded not guilty in a Miami federal court to 37 criminal charges that he mishandled classified documents upon leaving office in January 2021 and obstructed the government's efforts to retrieve them. He was initially indicted last Thursday, when he became the first former president to face criminal charges in American history.

Many experts and even Trump's former allies, like his former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, have said that the federal case against Trump is strong. They added that it could potentially lead to a long jail sentence for the former president.

Maddow disagrees. Starting out by saying that she's really bad at predicting things, the MSNBC host said live on The Rachel Maddow Show on Tuesday that she thinks that one way the case could be resolved is that "Judge Aileen Cannon keeps it and effectively pocket-vetoes the case."

U.S. District Court Judge Cannon, a Trump appointee, got selected by a court's computerized assignment system to oversee the case against the former president. She will take control over the case in the coming weeks and months, despite calls from ethics experts for her to resign.

Cannon was not present at Trump's arraignment on Tuesday, which was handled by magistrate judge Jonathan Goodman.

Maddow said that Cannon could "effectively" make the case "go away—if not by having a direct acquittal, then she does something else to make sure this is not going to happen or at least it's not going to happen in a time that would be relevant before any of the other cases against him are going to be adjudicated."

Former federal prosecutor Christine Adams is now a partner and founder at Los Angeles-based Adams, Duerk & Kamenstein. She told Newsweek that Cannon's role in the case makes it so that "there's no way to tell at this early stage if he is likely to be found guilty."

Adams said: "Even though the government seems to have reams of evidence, what evidence comes in at trial will depend on Judge Cannon's anticipated rulings on what classified material the government would have to make public, as well as her decisions on any defense motions alleging prosecutorial misconduct and biased, selective prosecution of Trump by the DOJ [Department of Justice]."

Another likely outcome of Trump's case, Maddow said, is that "Trump continues to assert 'Yes, I did, but I had the right,' and his lawyers cannot bring that into court because he doesn't have the right, in which case they settle."

Maddow added: "They plead guilty to something that keeps him out of jail, they find a way to do it. So he can still win politically by saying he did nothing wrong, but he doesn't have to face people about it."

Neama Rahmani, president of West Coast Trial Lawyers, told Newsweek: "Trump's attorneys can argue that Trump declassified the documents somehow and that if he declassified them, they no longer related to national defense under the Espionage Act," but "that would be difficult to prove."

"They could argue Trump didn't know exactly where and how the documents were being stored as his valet was moving them around Mar-a-Lago," Rahmani said. "Similarly, they would have solid grounds to pick apart the allegation that Trump caused one of his lawyers to submit a false certification to the government about the documents. I can't recall many cases where prosecutors hold someone responsible for the false statements of another person."