2023-08-03 21:29:56
Donald Trump, the only former president charged in the history of the United States, appeared this Thursday before a court in Washington to be read his most serious charges to date: four crimes of conspiracy and obstruction for his leading role in one of the darkest chapters of American democracy: the attempt to reverse the result of the 2020 elections that ended in the assault on the Capitol.
The accusation dates back to the events that occurred between November 3, 2020, when he lost the presidential election, and January 6, 2021, when he did everything possible to annul his result, encouraging his most radical supporters to take over the building. federal and demanding his vice president, Mike Pence, to stop the certification of Joe Biden as a new tenant of the White House.
Inside the federal courthouse in the District of Columbia, for the third time in four months, they will take your fingerprints and read you the indictment. As happened in his two previous prosecutions, in New York and in Miami, he has not been detained, handcuffed, or had a front and profile photo taken for the police file, given the public relevance of the subject.
The judge handling the case, Moxila Upadhyaya, who has presided over dozens of trials in the same court against Trumpists who stormed the headquarters of the legislative branch on January 6, will proceed to read to the protagonist of that event the four charges against him: conspiracy to defraud the US government, conspiracy to obstruct official process, obstruction of legal process, and conspiracy to violate civil rights.
Maximum security for a historical hearing
The former president, who could have appeared virtually, has chosen to do so in person to take a new bath of masses and victimhood, this time, in the country’s capital. In the middle of the afternoon, he has left his golf club in Bedminster (New Jersey) and has traveled by private jet to Washington. “I am going to Washington to be arrested for challenging a corrupt, stolen and rigged election. It is a great honor because I am being arrested for you ”, Trump has published on networks before arriving in court.
There, some supporters were waiting for him, with banners and costumes, most of whom remain convinced that Trump won the 2020 elections and that he is being the victim of a “witch hunt.” Outside the building there have been dialectical confrontations between faithful and detractors of the tycoon, but no major altercation that has prevented his appearance in court.
The Washington police and the Marshals, the service responsible for security inside the federal courts, have closed the streets and have escorted the ex-president to the door of the building. The deployment of security forces that has surrounded this act is already considered among the largest that have been carried out in the history of the country to ensure a judicial process.
Lawsuits pile up
The special prosecutor who has filed the accusation against Trump, Jack Smith, has also attended the appointment, as he already did at Trump’s hearing in Miami. Smith was appointed in the name of judicial independence by state attorney general Merrick Garland after Trump announced his candidacy for the primary. He was also the prosecutor in charge of investigating the case of the classified documents that the FBI found in Trump’s private residence in Florida, a case for which he was charged with 40 crimes.
There is still no date for the new trial that awaits the former president, who Smith has already assured that he will seek to have it happen “quickly”, presumably before the elections. If that were the case, Trump would find himself with an even tighter schedule in his final stretch of the electoral campaign. If convicted in the latter case, he could spend the rest of his life in prison.
At the moment, he already has a trial scheduled for October 2 for the case of fraud in his real estate business; another on March 25 of the following year for the accusation of documentary falsification for the bribes to the actress Stormy Daniels; and on May 20, for the Mar-a-Lago papers. In addition, in the coming weeks, she could still face a fourth indictment, and a fourth trial, for trying to rig the presidential election in the state of Georgia.
Trump will plead free speech
The former president’s lawyer, John Lauro, gave some clues on Wednesday about the path his defense will take in this trial. In statements to CNN, he invoked the First Amendment to the Constitution and assured that the accusation “is a direct attack on freedom of expression” and is “politically motivated.” In other words, he considers that the lies that Trump repeatedly expressed before and after the elections, alleging without evidence that he had been the victim of electoral fraud, and that led to the assault on the Capitol, are part of free speech.
To try to convince the jury, he will face the arguments of special prosecutor Smith, who alleges in the indictment that the former president “propagated these statements knowing that they were lies.” Falsehoods that “created an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger and eroded public faith in the elections,” which was part of a conspiracy to subvert the constitutional order.
In the same court that will judge the tycoon, hundreds of trials of great political relevance have taken place throughout history, such as that of Mary Surrat, one of those involved in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, who tried unsuccessfully to prevent his death. sentenced to death in 1865. Or that of Charles Guiteau, also sentenced to death for the assassination of a president, the Republican James Garfield, in 1882.
The Watergate case was also investigated here, a scandal that arose in the 1970s as a result of the theft of documents from the headquarters of the United States Democratic Party, which ended the government of Richard Nixon, who tried to cover up those responsible. In the court where Trump will be tried, five of the former president’s advisers were convicted.
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