A judge has set March 25 as the start of Donald Trump’s first criminal trial in New York, in the case of payments to a pornographic film star.
But the former leader, candidate for the November presidential election, is also indicted for his electoral pressure and his management of state secrets – accumulating a total of 91 charges.
An update on the legal troubles of the Republican, who proclaims his innocence in all these matters.
Payments to a porn star
Pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels, April 16, 2018 in New York / EDUARDO MUNOZ ALVAREZ / AFP/Archives
This will be the first criminal trial for a former president in the history of the United States: Donald Trump is accused of having “orchestrated” payments to silence three individuals whose revelations could have harmed him before the 2016 presidential election.
In particular, $130,000 paid to pornographic actress Stormy Daniels so that she could keep secret an alleged extra-marital affair dating back to 2006.
Each of the 34 offenses for which Donald Trump is being prosecuted carries a maximum sentence of four years in prison, but the New York justice system could also impose an alternative sentence and not send him behind bars.
This trial will not be the most consequential of Donald Trump’s legal troubles and observers consider the case fragile.
Electoral pressures
Supporters of Donald Trump in front of the Capitol, January 6, 2021 in Washington DC / Samuel Corum / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP
Another more damaging affair for the septuagenarian: his attempts to reverse the result of the 2020 presidential election, won by Joe Biden.
Donald Trump was indicted in August by federal authorities, accused of “conspiracy against the American state”.
At the heart of the matter, the attack on the headquarters of the American Congress, by supporters of the Republican, on January 6, 2021.
This trial was due to start in Washington on March 4, but was postponed, time to rule on possible criminal immunity for the former president. His request is expected to be considered by the Supreme Court.
In this case, the former head of state faces decades in prison.
Georgia
Rudy Giuliani during a press conference in the parking lot of a landscaper in Philadelphia, November 7, 2020 / Bryan R. Smith / AFP/Archives
Donald Trump’s electoral pressures in 2020 are also at the heart of a case in Georgia.
In this state in the south of the country, the former leader is among other things accused of his call to an official on January 2, 2021, asking him to “find” 12,000 ballot papers in his name.
About ten other people have been charged in this case, including his former lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.
The prosecutor used a law on organized crime to prosecute them, providing for sentences of five to twenty years in prison.
But Donald Trump called for the charges to be dropped, claiming that the prosecutor was guilty of professional misconduct linked to an intimate affair with a lawyer who worked on the case.
State secrets
Documents seized from Trump’s residence in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, are exposed by US judicial authorities in August 2022 / Handout / US DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE/AFP/Archives
Donald Trump is also accused of having endangered the security of the United States by keeping state secrets after his departure from the White House in January 2021.
It was in the context of this affair that the residence of the ex-businessman was searched by the FBI in Florida on August 8, 2022. Boxes of documents were found in a bathroom, in storage rooms …
A federal trial is scheduled in Miami for May 25, 2024. Here again, Donald Trump faces prison time.
Civil Trials in New York
The Republican is also being prosecuted in several civil cases. He is, among other things, accused of having colossally inflated the value of his real estate assets in the 2010s. A verdict should be rendered on Friday in this case.
Donald Trump was also ordered to pay a whopping $83.3 million in damages to author E. Jean Carroll for defaming her, amid accusations of rape in the 1990s.
