Electoral rallies and debates have lost interest in the United States. What has been attracting public attention for a few months now with a view to the 2024 presidential elections are the indictments of prosecutor Jack Smith, the appearances of Donald Trump and his lawyers in courts and tribunals, the trials that are already coming up and , to a lesser extent, the problems with justice that Hunter Biden, the second son of Joe Biden, also faces; Some problems that, together with the Republican accusations about his business in China and other countries, have become the perfect counterattack weapon for conservatives against his father, the nation’s president.
US politics has never been judicialized as it is now, among other things because it is the first time that a president has been the subject of criminal charges for federal crimes. And it is also a double entry, with 34 charges of forgery to bribe the porn actress Stormy Daniels and another 40 for appropriation and retention of secret documents at her residence in Mar-a-Lago (Florida). This is pending a third indictment for the assault on the Capitol and other attempts to annul the 2020 elections.
The last three charges in the classified papers case were added Thursday night to the 37 that special counsel Jack Smith had already indicted against the former president in June. These are two accusations of obstruction of justice and a third of withholding information on national defense. Among the first two charges, of obstruction, stands out the one related to Trump’s attempt, together with two employees, to erase the video surveillance images that recorded the movements of boxes carried out to hide a large part of the papers that the leader had taken illicit from the White House.
Smith maintains that Trump and those two employees and also defendants, Walt Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira, tried to “alter, destroy, mutilate and hide” the records at Mar-a-Lago to “harm” their use as evidence. A federal crime of destruction of evidence at the level of witness tampering, false statements and deliberate retention of secret documents, in violation of the Espionage law, which also stands out among the charges of the public prosecutor.
The third charge added this last Thursday – one of the retention of sensitive documents – refers to the illegal appropriation, concealment and dissemination of a plan on a possible attack on Iran that the former president commented on during a meeting at his Bedminster golf club. (New Jersey) in July 2021.
The expansion of the accusations against Trump for the Mar-a-Lago case were known hours after a new meeting of the grand jury, which for long months has investigated Trump’s responsibility in the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 and in other attempts of his to reverse the result of the 2020 presidential elections.
That meeting and the meeting that prosecutor Jack Smith held with two of the leader’s lawyers to discuss the matter at the same time made the media think that this Thursday would lead to the indictment of the ultra leader in this other summary: an indictment which is given as certain after Smith officially informed Trump last weekend that he was the subject of the proceedings: a procedure that in the US almost always precedes the incriminating act equivalent to prosecution. It was not like that, but the new imputation seems only a matter of time.
Of the long half dozen criminal and civil cases that the ex-president faces, five already have a trial date. In October the lawsuit for fraud against the real estate empire called the Trump Organization will be seen; on January 15, a second civil trial for defamation will take place against the writer Jean Carroll, who last month won her a first lawsuit for that infraction and for sexual abuse; on January 29, the ex-governor will be tried, together with three of his children, for defrauding the public to attract investors; A hearing is scheduled for March for 34 counts of forgery in the payment of a bribe to the porn star Stormy Daniels, and on May 20, the trial for the Mar-a-Lago case is due. All this in the middle of the campaign towards the presidential elections of November 2024.
But neither the torrent of accusations nor the ordeal of trials that he is already facing seem to alter the electoral plans and expectations of Trump, who also benefits from the multiple gifts that his rivals are giving him, both in the Republican camp with a view to the primaries as well as from the Democratic Party and other formations.
The former president has not dropped in the polls, quite the contrary, after the first two criminal charges, especially against his main adversary for the primaries, the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, whom he leads in support by 30 points.
The high number of competitors for that internal race – a dozen at the moment – ??also makes it difficult to build a non-Trump Republican alternative, which obviously strengthens their advantage to become the conservative candidate against Biden in 2024.
As if that were not enough, both the announced presentation of possible third ways by 2024, some from the Green Party and another from the No Labels platform, as well as the advance of the Republican Democrat and conspiracy theorist Robert Kennedy, son of Bobby Kennedy and nephew of JFK, especially harm Biden and, therefore, benefit Trump.
A large part of the Republicans fear, however, that the repudiation of many voters towards a former president who is a liar and a bad loser who at the time of the elections may have been tried for serious crimes, or is about to be, could put an end to the right’s chances of wresting the presidency from its current Democratic occupant. A fear that, however, does not translate, for now, into any serious initiative by the Republicans to get Trump out of the electoral race and once and for all to clean up the rarefied internal struggle in the leading world power.