Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Glenn Kirschner said on Friday that former President Donald Trump‘s potential conviction in the Georgia election subversion case against him can “only” be stopped by two things.
Trump and over a dozen of his allies stand accused in Georgia of conspiring to overturn Joe Biden‘s 2020 election victory in the state after the now-president won by a slim margin. There were initially 18 Trump allies charged in the case, but four defendants have since pleaded guilty. Trump and his remaining 14 co-defendants have pleaded not guilty, with the former president claiming that the case is politically motivated against him.
“I believe he will be convicted of these crimes. The only thing that can stop it is not a jury of his peers. It’s a corrupt, radical right-wing six-justice block of Donald Trump’s Supreme Court,” Kirschner, a legal analyst and frequent Trump critic, said in a YouTube video on Friday.
When Trump was in office, he nominated three conservative justices to the bench—Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett—creating a 6-3 conservative slant. The current Supreme Court has been scrutinized by some for several controversial rulings, like its July 1 decision that former presidents have immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts, but not for unofficial acts. The ruling came from Trump’s attempt to throw out his federal election subversion case, which he has also pleaded not guilty for.
“That’s the only thing standing between Donald Trump and a jail cell, accountability for his crimes. That and an election,” Kirschner added.
Trump, the GOP presidential nominee, will go up against Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, in November’s election.
However, Kirschner isn’t worried about the election standing in the way of Trump’s Georgia case. “I believe come November 6th, the day after the November 5th election, when Donald Trump loses in a landslide—that is the trajectory he is on at the moment—then he will be going to trial and case after case after case, not as a candidate for office and certainly not as a president-elect, but a plain old citizen who has lived the life of crime. Those chickens will finally come home to roost.”
While Harris is leading Trump in the national polls, it’s still a close race. Poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight currently has Harris 2.7 points ahead of Trump (48.1 to 45.4 percent).
Newsweek reached out to Kirschner via text message and Trump’s communications director, Steven Cheung, via email for comment on Saturday morning.
Former President Donald Trump speaks to reporters on September 10 in Philadelphia. Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Glenn Kirschner said on Friday that Trump’s potential conviction in the Georgia election subversion case against him can “only” be stopped by two things.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Kirschner’s analysis of Trump’s case came just one day after Judge Scott McAfee, who is presiding over the former president’s Georgia case, threw out two of Trump’s charges involving false documents, saying that the charges fall under federal jurisdiction.
“President Trump and his legal team in Georgia have prevailed once again,” Steve Sadow, Trump’s lead lawyer in the Georgia case, said on Thursday.
However, in a separate ruling on Thursday, McAfee did uphold the racketeering (or RICO) charge that has been at the center of this case.
“This doesn’t mean anything with respect to the ongoing RICO prosecution against Donald Trump or the decades in prison he is facing and will be facing once he’s convicted,” Kirschner said on his YouTube show on Friday.
Trump initially faced 13 charges in an August 2023 indictment brought on by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. In March, McAfee dismissed three other charges that he faced over lack of detail, meaning Trump only currently faces eight charges in the case. Some charges that his allies face have also been thrown out over the pre-trial process.
Kirschner also said that he has a “feeling” that Georgia prosecutors might appeal McAfee’s recent ruling to quash two “relatively minor crimes” on which Trump was indicted.
