2023-08-27 05:01:00
While maintaining his campaign to win the Republican nomination in the 2024 presidential elections in the United States, Donald Trump simultaneously faces a total of 91 charges distributed in 4 different criminal cases. It is an unprecedented situation in the history of the country, since it is the first ex-president of the United States charged with criminal offenses.
The accusations come from the states of Washington, Florida, Georgia and New York. If Trump were to be convicted in the first two before next year’s election and won, he could try to pardon himself. However, that power does not extend to the Georgia and New York cases, because they are state proceedings. The US president can only grant pardons for federal crimes.
In New York, only the governor, currently a Democrat, could pardon him, while in Georgia pardons are granted by a five-member Board of Pardons and Paroles. In addition, there a criminal can only request a pardon at least five years after serving his prison sentence and provided he has “led a law-abiding life” since his release.
The alleged manipulation
Of all the charges, 13 of them were announced on the night of August 15 after a Georgia grand jury accused Trump of trying to rig the results of the 2020 elections in that state, where the Democrat and current president Joe Biden won by a narrow margin. The prosecutor in charge of the case, Fani Willis, proposed to the court on Thursday that the trial start on October 23 so as not to conflict with the other hearings and trials that the tycoon has scheduled.
Criminal charges are also filed in this case by 18 of his closest advisers, such as his former personal lawyer and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and his former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, among others. All of the defendants were charged under an existing Georgia gang crime law, which is commonly used against gangs and carries penalties of between five and 20 years in prison. This is the so-called Corrupt and Influenced by Extortion Organizations (RICO) Act, which made it possible to convict mafia bosses like John Gotti in the past, by preventing these bosses from escaping Justice for not having committed the crimes allegedly ordered to others.
The assault on the Capitol
Another case concerns a grand jury in the District of Columbia, which filed four federal charges against Trump not only for allegedly trying to reverse the results of the 2020 elections, but also for having instigated the assault on the Capitol during the inauguration of Biden. The charges, which could carry a maximum penalty of 55 years in prison, are: conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy against the right to vote.
Because the case focuses on an attack on a central process of American democracy, it is considered the most significant of the four charges against him, according to The New York Times. It is not yet known when the trial will take place. Prosecutors proposed January 2024, but Trump asked for a delay until after the 2024 election, though his lawyers have yet to submit a formal proposal.
classified documents
The third case takes place in the city of Miami, Florida, where a grand jury charged Trump with 40 federal crimes for mishandling classified materials. Specifically, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, after leaving power in 2021, the magnate ordered the transfer from the White House to his mansion in Mar-a-Lago dozens of boxes with newspaper clippings, letters, photos and also hundreds of confidential documents, including information about nuclear secrets and plans to attack other countries. Those documents would not have been safely stored, but instead ended up in different corners of the residence, including a bedroom, a ballroom and a bathroom, photos included in the indictment showed.
Trump also allegedly conspired to obstruct government efforts to recover the files, including in defiance of a subpoena. Two of his employees, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, face charges related to conspiracy to obstruct the investigation and making false statements. The trial of the former president for this cause is scheduled for May 20, 2024.
bribes
The case that earned the Republican millionaire the controversial honor of becoming the first former president of the country to face judicial charges was related to the porn actress Stormy Daniels. In March, a grand jury in New York indicted Trump on charges that he paid $130,000 through his attorney Michael Cohen to Daniels to keep quiet about an alleged sexual relationship between the two 10 years earlier.
In this case, Trump faces 34 state charges for falsifying business documents, each of which could carry a prison sentence of up to 4 years. The date for the trial is scheduled for March 24 of next year, coinciding with the height of the Republican Party primary.
The bell
As the accusations continue, the former president maintains his narrative and insists that all the lawsuits are politically motivated and seek to hinder his return to the White House. More precisely, he on every occasion refers to his situation as a “witch hunt”. He also takes advantage and uses the cases against him to raise funds for his electoral campaign and present himself as the main defender of his followers. The line he repeats over and over again at his rallies is: “In the end, they’re not coming for me. They’re coming for you, and I’m just getting in their way.”
Trump did not go to the first debate of the candidates for the Republican nomination for the next elections on Wednesday, considering that he did not need it to make himself known. In his place, he participated in an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, in which he called his four criminal indictments “bullshit.” In addition, he criticized traditional television networks, stating that they “no longer have credibility” and defined the prosecutors who charged him as “wild animals, sick people.”
The ex-president fervently defended his belief that the 2020 elections were fraudulent, while stressing that citizens are intelligent people because “usually if someone is charged they go down in the polls.” According to the latest polls, Trump would have a huge advantage compared to the next candidate, Florida Governor Ron Desantis, beating him by almost 50 percentage points: Trump would have a 62% vote intention among Republican voters, while than Desantis 16%. The rest of the competitors do not reach double digits.
Meanwhile, only two of the eight Republican candidates for the White House who participated in the debate made it clear that they will not support the millionaire if he is convicted of any of the multiple crimes of which he was accused. They are the former governors of Arkansas and New Jersey, Asa Hutchinson and Chris Christie respectively. The latter insisted that “someone has to stop normalizing these behaviors” and pointed out that regardless of what is thought about the charges against Trump, his attitude in the assault on the capitol on January 6, 2021 was “improper to his position as president”.
The outlook seems to show that the millionaire could be close to returning to the presidency. Nor is there any constitutional law that prevents him from running as a candidate despite the four accusations that he has at hand. Of course, his lawyers are working to delay the legal proceedings as long as possible, in the hope that Trump will evade accountability.
Information: Axel Schwarzfeld
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