This is so crappy. So corrupt. So grotesque. So Berlusconi.

Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump asked a federal judge on Monday night to indefinitely postpone his trial on charges of illegally retaining classified documents after he left office, saying that the proceeding should not begin until all “substantive motions” in the case had been presented and decided.

And what federal judge is that? One that Trump made a federal judge, of course! One that Trump made a federal judge in defiance of her woeful lack of experience or smarts or any other qualification other than trumpism. He commits a whole slew of federal crimes but no problem because he had carefully put a pro-him hack in the jurisdiction he just happened to commit the federal crimes in. Lucky break yeah?!

The written filing — submitted 30 minutes before its deadline of midnight on Tuesday — presents a significant early test for Judge Aileen M. Cannon, the Trump-appointed jurist who is overseeing the case. If granted, it could have the effect of pushing Mr. Trump’s trial into the final stages of the presidential campaign in which he is now the Republican front-runner or even past the 2024 election.

What a spectacle that’s going to be.

There could be complications of a sort never before presented to a court if Mr. Trump is a candidate in the last legs of a presidential campaign and a federal criminal defendant on trial at the same time. If the trial is pushed back until after the election and Mr. Trump wins, he could try to pardon himself after taking office or have his attorney general dismiss the matter entirely.

Some of the former president’s advisers have been blunt in private conversations that he is looking to winning the election as a solution to his legal problems. 

Gee, ya think? I thought he was doing it out of pure disinterested concern for the good of the nation.

The former president’s lawyers also suggested that they might raise “constitutional and statutory challenges” to Mr. Smith’s authority as special counsel. Moreover, they laid the groundwork for questioning whether an impartial jury could be seated at the trial while Mr. Trump was running for office.

Ugh god it’s almost funny. “But he’s running for office! So that he can steal more secret documents and break more things! How can a jury be impartial when he’s running for office?!”

“There is simply no question any trial of this action during the pendency of a presidential election will impact both the outcome of that election,” they wrote, “and, importantly, the ability of the defendants to obtain a fair trial.”

Therefore you must let him win that election and do the same thing all over again but more! Plus of course firing all the relevant prosecutors and agency heads until there is nothing but Trump loyalists as far as the eye can see. Fun times ahead!