This will be the first criminal trial in the history of a former president of the United States: Donald Trump was notified in person on Thursday of his appearance from March 25 in New York in a case of payments to silence an alleged relationship with a porn actress.
At the same time, a Georgia judge considered a request from Donald Trump’s lawyers who challenge the lawsuits in the case of pressure allegedly exerted by the Republican to reverse the results of the 2020 presidential election. They criticize the prosecutor of having maintained a romantic relationship with a lawyer she had hired to work on this case.
These are two of the four criminal cases (plus two civil cases) that the Republican magnate is facing this year a few months before the presidential election on November 5.
And this new legal week for Donald Trump should continue on Friday, if, as a source close to the case confirmed to AFP, another New York judge renders his decision in the civil trial where the ex-president is accused of fraud and of having colossally inflated the value of his real estate assets in the 2010s to seduce the banks.
In the criminal trial on March 25 over payments to former pornographic film star Stormy Daniels, Donald Trump, 77, once again denounced a “case of electoral interference”, a “disgrace” and a “State, a city (of New York) rigged” by President Joe Biden’s Democrats.
“How can you run for office when you’re sitting in a court of law? “, had launched upon arrival the former president who dreams of becoming one again.
Judge Juan Merchan of the New York court nevertheless rejected Donald Trump’s requests to dismiss the prosecution, as the businessman and political tribune wanted.
Prison for Trump?
At the origin of this upcoming trial, the attorney of the State of New York for the jurisdiction of Manhattan, the elected magistrate of the Democratic Party Alvin Bragg, said in a press release “satisfied” with the decision of the court and “looking forward to presenting his case in court on March 25, 2024.”
But what does Donald Trump risk?
Each of the 34 accounting frauds with which he is accused carries a maximum sentence of four years in prison if he is found guilty, but the courts could impose an alternative sentence and not send him behind bars.
The 45th President of the United States (2017-2021) is accused of having disguised the accounts of his family business Trump Organization to notably conceal the payment of $130,000 to Stormy Daniels, just before the November 2016 presidential election, so that she kept quiet about an alleged relationship in 2006.
He was previously married to Melania Trump and denied any relationship with the actress, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.
For the moment, the numerous cases targeting him have not damaged his reputation with the base of Republican activists and he won hands down the first two primaries of his party for the presidential nomination in November, in the States of Iowa and New Hampshire.
The master of the republicans even made the courts political forums. He took advantage of each of his appearances in the courtrooms to portray himself, without evidence, as a victim of legal machinations orchestrated by prosecutors and judges in the pay of the Democratic camp. And his legal troubles allowed him to raise millions of dollars from activists.
“He is spending millions of campaign donations on attorney fees. All this chaos can only lead to further losses for the Republicans,” criticized Nikki Haley, her only rival for the party’s presidential nomination, on X (ex-Twitter).
The New York trial will not be the most consequential of Donald Trump’s legal troubles and observers consider the case fragile.
He is also being prosecuted in federal and Georgia state courts for his allegedly unlawful attempts to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election won by Joe Biden.
In court in Atlanta, lawyer Nathan Wade assured that his romantic relationship with prosecutor Fani Wallis began “around March” 2022 and that it was “not secret, but simply intimate”.
The federal trial in Washington was scheduled to start on March 4 but was postponed while a ruling was made on possible criminal immunity for the former president.
