Any stage will do. Donald Trump didn’t have to attend the appeal hearing in Washington DC but in this, an election year, he insisted.
No wonder. It’s a no-brainer.
Trump’s legal troubles continue to propel his popularity and his fundraising.
So with a federal courthouse swamped by media for the latest legal twist, there is profile and profit in the personal appearance.
It’s court as a curtain call.
If the three-judge panel falls in Trump’s favour – and that’s a big “if” – it would be good news for him in the US capital and beyond.
Having the case thrown out would bode well for him in his efforts to dismiss similar state-level charges of election interference, with similar arguments, at Fulton County in Georgia.
Trump’s lawyers say he should enjoy absolute immunity for his actions while in office and they claim it would be double jeopardy to prosecute him over actions for which he was already impeached and acquitted in the Senate.
A ruling in his favour would also have consequences for his prosecution in New York on false accounting around hush money payments to a former porn star – charges which relate to his time in office.
In such a scenario, three out of four criminal prosecutions would be undermined.
The fourth, on the mishandling of classified documents, is presided over by a Trump-appointed judge who has attracted accusations of bias towards the former president in pre-trial rulings.
So there is much riding on the opinions of the three appeal judges who sat through the oral arguments in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
Whatever conclusion they reach, their decision will almost certainly be appealed by the losing side to the Supreme Court. Assuming it agrees to hear the case, it will probably take many weeks.
Short of the result he wants most, therein lies the partial victory for Trump – delay.
As things stand, he is scheduled to face trial on 4 March on election interference in Washington DC.
Read more:
All the legal cases facing former president
Prosecutor warns of ‘frightening future’ if Trump wins case
Can Donald Trump run again in 2024?
Three years on from Capitol riots
Thereafter, dates are pencilled in for 25 March (New York – falsifying business records), 20 May (mishandling classified documents), and 5 August, when the prosecution in Georgia has asked for the trial to begin there.
It is a tight schedule getting tighter, as it pushes towards the date of the presidential election.
It’s likely, still, that at least one trial will be completed before Americans go to the polls in November.
But that’s not the only political date red-inked onto the courtroom calendar.
Republicans select their nominee at the party convention in July and, for long enough, they have been contemplating the choice of a convicted felon to be their presidential candidate.
It depends on a lot of things – not least the clock.