Donald Trump’s first criminal trial begins Monday in New York

In the middle of his electoral campaign for the November presidential elections, the highly anticipated trial for the payment to avoid a sexual scandal begins on Monday. Donald Trump, the first former American president to sit on a criminal justice bench.

With just under seven months to go until the polls, the Republican billionaire faces a prison sentence, an unprecedented situation that raises many questions about the campaign and his probable duel with the current tenant of the White House, Joe Biden. .

Trump is summoned to the New York State Supreme Court starting at 9:30 a.m. local time (1:30 p.m. GMT) on Monday to respond to accusations of falsifying business documents from the Trump Organization, his family business. .

According to the accusation, the Republican hid the payment of US$130,000 in the final stretch of the 2016 presidential campaign to the former porn actress Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet about an extramarital sexual relationship that they had had ten years before and that Trump has always denied.

Neither the extramarital relationship nor the payment to Daniels is a crime, but allegedly trying to falsify documents from his family business in order not to declare the reimbursement of the amount initially paid out of his own pocket by his then personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, currently his enemy.

For Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, voted in line with the Democrats, it was “a conspiracy to rig the presidential election, and lying in business documents to cover it up.”

While the defense maintains that the payments responded to an extortion attempt by Daniels, the prosecution seeks to show that Trump orchestrated two other payments to cover up embarrassing matters in order to deceive Americans ahead of the 2016 presidential election against Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Accused a year ago in this case of 34 counts of “falsification of accounting documents”, each of them punished with up to 4 years in prison, Trump pleads innocent and feels like a victim of a “Witch hunt” of the Democrats to prevent him from returning to the White House.

Jury selection

Described as “zombie” because it had been in limbo for a long time in the Manhattan prosecutor’s office, this case is considered by experts to be the weakest of the four criminal proceedings against Trump.

But it may be a stumbling block in his electoral path, as the other three, linked to his allegedly illegal attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, have been so delayed due to the multiple appeals filed by his army of lawyers and issues of procedure, which are unlikely to be judged before the November 5 elections.

The lawyers have presented several appeals in recent days, including removing Colombian-born judge Juan Merchan from the case, so far without success.

If everything goes as planned, the trial will begin on Monday the 15th with the selection of the 12 members of the jury, a process that can last up to two weeks.

These citizens, who will remain anonymous for security reasons, will dictate the fate of the Republican billionaire at the end of a process that can last between six and eight weeks.

Electoral impact

The consequences of the trial are difficult to predict for an electorate, already unenthusiastic about a new duel between the current president, Democrat Joe Biden, 81, and Trump, 77, one of the most controversial and divisive figures. of American politics.

“It is unprecedented that the candidate of a major party is credibly accused of several crimes”Hans Noel, professor at Georgetown University, summarized for AFP.

According to several surveys, a portion of American voters (the 32% according to an Ipsos survey conducted in March) said they would be less inclined to vote for Trump if he is found guilty.

But Noel recalls that “Donald Trump’s legal problems mainly helped him with the Republican electorate” during the primaries, by fueling “his speech as the standard bearer of the people, attacked by the powers that be.”

Trump, who survived two impeachment trials in Congress during his term in the White House (2017-2021), has seen his judicial problems pile up in the last year.

During this time, he has been sentenced to pay compensation and fines amounting to more than US$500 million for defaming a former journalist who accused him of rape and for modifying, as he saw fit, the value of the assets of the Trump Organization.