A first criminal trial for Donald Trump

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 an porn actress.

At the same time, a Georgia judge began hearing a motion from Donald Trump's lawyers seeking the dismissal of election interference charges against the ex-president, accusing the prosecutor in charge of investigating the case 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.

Leaving the Manhattan courthouse, Donald Trump, 77, once again denounced a “case of electoral interference”, a “disgrace” and a “state, a city (of New York) rigged” by the Democrats of President Joe Biden.

“How can you run for office when you’re sitting in a court of law? “, said 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 wished.

Accounting fraud

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.”

For the moment, these cases and the many others targeting Donald Trump have not damaged his credibility with the base of Republican activists and he handily won his party's first two primaries for the presidential nomination of 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).

In New York, the 45th President of the United States is indicted for 34 accounting frauds and accused of having disguised the accounts of his company to hide in particular the payment of 130,000 dollars to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, just before the presidential election , to keep her quiet about an alleged relationship in 2006.

The Republican businessman, who was already married to Melania Trump, denied any relationship with the actress, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.

Fragile file

This 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.

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.

This new legal week for Donald Trump could continue on Friday, if, as a source close to the case confirmed to AFP, Judge Arthur Engoron renders his judgment in a civil trial where the ex-president is accused of having colossally inflated the value of its real estate assets in the 2010s to attract the banks.