The first criminal trial of a former president of the United States will begin on March 25. This has been decided by Judge Juan Merchan of New York, after rejecting Donald Trump’s motion to withdraw the 34 charges related to the falsification of documents against him for the bribe he paid in 2016 to the porn actress Stormy Daniels. Trump falsified, in the middle of the campaign, accounting statements to hide this bribe as “legal fees”, intended to silence her about the extramarital relationship they had had a decade before, and which Daniels had threatened to make public.
Thus, jury selection will begin next month in the Manhattan court. Trump, who has denounced the prosecution for building a case against him based on “politically motivated charges”, was present at the pretrial hearing this Thursday. The indictment, filed last year by District Attorney Alvin Bragg, has made his case the first of four trials that Trump faces for 91 criminal offenses in Washington, Georgia and Florida, in addition to this one in New York.
The decision represents a new judicial blow to the magnate, who has based his legal strategy on delaying all trials as much as possible, preferably until after the presidential elections in November. If he is elected president, he will be able to withdraw the accusations against him in the federal cases – Washington and Florida – but not in this state case, which is progressing as planned despite his litigation.
In addition to the four criminal charges, Trump has already been convicted of sexual abuse and defamation in two civil cases in New York, and is awaiting the verdict in the fraud trial with the Trump Organization, also in that state, for having artificially inflated the value of their assets to obtain advantageous conditions from banks and insurers.
Prosecutor Bragg has framed the Stormy Daniels case beyond document falsification, the main charge with which Trump is formally accused, and has alleged that it is aggravated by the context of the electoral campaign in which the bribe of 130,000 occurred. Dollars. A campaign, that of 2016, after which Trump emerged victorious, losing popular support by 3 million votes, but his victory, flipping key states such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Florida, propelled him towards the White House.
This case is advanced to the one in Washington, which was initially scheduled for March 4, but is on hold indefinitely after the appeal presented by Trump, who alleges immunity, and which is in the hands of the Supreme Court after the ruling against from a District of Columbia appeals court earlier this month. In that case, he is being investigated for his efforts to try to subvert American democracy with his attempt to remain in power, which culminated in the assault on the Capitol on January 6, when the election of Joe Biden was being certified inside. .
This Thursday, before entering the court, Trump told the press that this case is part of the judicial persecution of the “Joe Biden White House”, although this case is state and not federal, so the Department of Justice has no role. In court, the magnate pleaded “not guilty” and reiterated his argument that there is a witch hunt against him.
The judge plans for the trial to move quickly and the sentence to arrive around six weeks after the start of the trial, that is, at the beginning of May. The defense lawyer, Todd Blanche, has demanded more time to prepare and has called the trial against the former president unfair, since according to him it intervenes in his candidacy to return to the White House next year. “We have faced extremely accelerated schedules in each and every trial,” Blanche denounced. Judge Merchan has responded that he accepted “at his own risk” to take Trump’s case and the demands that this entails.
In parallel to this hearing, another hearing is underway in Georgia this Thursday in the case of Trump’s attempt to manipulate the result of the elections in that state. There, the court hearing will serve to decide whether to disqualify two of the prosecutors who brought charges against the magnate, Fani Willis and Nathan Wade, for having had a romantic relationship in the past. Trump’s defense argues that this relationship, recognized by both, has created a conflict of interest.
In that case, Trump and 18 other defendants were indicted in August on conspiracy and other charges in connection with the plot to interfere with the outcome of the election. Among the evidence is the audio of a call that Trump made to the secretary of state asking him to find 11,780 votes, exactly the ones that would have helped him win the elections in Georgia.
For now, the former president and candidate has benefited, economically and electorally, from the court cases against him. He clearly dominates the Republican primaries and his voting intention is already around 45%, equal to that of Biden, his probable rival in November.
