The appearance of donald trump for the case stormy daniels this tuesday could score A before and after in American politics. He is the first ex-president to be charged in the country’s history, in a framework where presidents are still considered immune once they leave office.

Also opens the door to new charges in the criminal investigations that Trump accumulates: the accusations of electoral fraud in Georgia, the retention of classified material in his Mar-a-Lago mansion and the assault on the Capitol.

The former Republican president does not consider that he has committed any crime and has taken advantage of the situation to campaign alluding to a conspiracy against him. He has renounced an agreement and will voluntarily go to the Manhattan courthouse.

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The appearance. The former president will appear before a judge at 2:15 p.m., 8:15 p.m. in Spain, for the irregular payment of $130,000 to the porn actress Stormy Daniels, with whom he had an affair, to silence her and for justifying that payment as electoral expenses.

  • The list of charges that Trump faces adds up to more than 30, according to various media outlets, although they will be known at the time of the appearance.
  • Trump has chosen to go to trial rather than plead guilty. There will be no agreement with the Prosecutor’s Office because his lawyers assure that he has not committed any crime.
  • You will not be handcuffed, but will come forward and be fingerprinted. It remains to be seen if they will also take the frontal and profile photographs. In short, he will submit to the same processes as any other accused although, as a former president, he will have protection from the Secret Services.
  • Protests by Trump supporters in New York are expected over this summons and other less relevant appearances have been cancelled.

Personal quarrels with the prosecutor and the judge? On his Truth Social network, Donald Trump charged the judge in the case Juan Manuel Merchan, arguing that the magistrate “hates him” and that he has been placed by Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg, with whom he has a personal dispute.

  • This January, Juan Manuel Merchan sentenced Allen Weisselberg, former financial director of the Trump Organization, to five months in prison, another five of probation and the payment of two million dollars. He was accused of being part of a plot of tax fraud inside the company. They paid part of the salaries to their employees in the dark and in undeclared benefits. For Trump, Merchan “played it” on Weisselberg.
  • The story with Alvin Bragg dates back to 2019, when the Trump Foundation had to close and the then-president was forced to pay $2 million for misusing donations to “intervene in the 2016 presidential primaries.” Bragg himself was overseeing the case when he was number two in the New York State Attorney’s Office.

Has he lost popularity because of the imputation? Trump has chosen to use his impeachment to gain popularity and add donations to his campaign.

  • Within 24 hours of being charged, raised more than four million dollars for his re-election campaign.
  • He has dismissed the accusation as a “witch hunt”, “the biggest electoral interference in history” and has gone so far as to say that the support he receives is “against the left-wing radicals, rioters, extortionists, scoundrel politicians and thugs who are still destroying our country”.
  • The Republican Party has closed ranks, even some rivals who are also running for the presidency have supported it, such as Ron DeSantis, who has described the impeachment as “anti-American”, Mike Pence, who describes it as “political persecution” and Kevin McArthy -president of the House of Representatives – which states that the body “will hold Alvin Bragg and his unprecedented abuse of power to account.”

What does it mean to be the first imputed ex-president? Donald Trump has become the first imputed former president of United States history.

  • Under Justice Department policy, US presidents are immune from prosecution while in office.
  • However, this immunity tends to be maintained once they have left the Presidency, although the Constitution does not indicate it as such. With Trump, that taboo has been broken.
  • The fact that he has been indicted for the Stormy Daniels case implies that the other investigations open on him could follow the same path.

Other open investigations. Currently, Trump has three other criminal investigations open and several civil proceedings.

  • Trump’s attempts to overturn Georgia state results in the 2020 elections. According to the report issued by a grand jury, there was no electoral fraud as the former president claimed, and several witnesses would have lied under oath. Witnesses include Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state who received a call from Trump asking him to “find” his missing 11,780 votes. Biden had beaten him by 11,779.
  • The retention of classified material after leaving office. The former president had more than 300 classified documents in his mansion of Mar-a-Lago. The FBI and the Department of Justice have recently gathered new evidence that could allow them to charge him with obstruction of justice.
  • The commission investigating the storming the capitol he has concluded that “none of the events of January 6 would have happened without him.” This commission has asked the Department of Justice to criminally charge him and Congress to prevent him from re-presenting himself in the elections.
  • By civil means, Donald Trump has two lawsuits from the writer E.Jean Carroll for defamation. Carroll also accuses him of sexually assaulting her in the fitting rooms of a 5th Avenue store in New York in the 1990s.

Timeline of the Daniels case.

  • In 2006, at least one sexual encounter took place between Trump and Stormy Daniels -Stephanie Clifford real name-, which the former president denies.
  • 10 years later, in 2016, in the middle of the electoral campaign, Daniels tries to sell the story of his ‘affair’. David Pecker, then editor of ‘The National Enquirer’ and a friend of Trump, buys the story from him but does not publish it.
  • Years before, on the set of ‘Embarrassing Mess’, Daniels had already revealed his relationship with Trump to the team, as Seth Rogen acknowledged in 2018.
  • Pecker arranged payment to the actress with the lawyer and personal advisor Michael Cohenwho initially put up the money and was later reimbursed by the White House.
  • These $130,000 form part of the money raised in the campaign 2016 presidential
  • In 2018 Michael Cohen admits his guilt in illegal electoral financing and in the camouflage of the 130,000 dollars as a political donation.
  • The investigation is opened in 2019 by prosecutor Cyrus Vance, but later it goes to Alvin Braggs.
  • Three years later, in 2022, it passes into the hands of a grand jury deciding to indict Trump on March 30, 2023.
  • According to leaks of the content of the meetings of this grand jury, they examined a second case of a ‘Playboy’ modelKaren McDougal, who claims to have had sexual relations with Trump for 10 months in 2006. Like Daniels, McDougal would also have sold her story to ‘The National Enquirer’ in exchange for $ 150,000 to hide her testimony.