A “sham” of justice. “Electoral interference” to prevent him from returning to the White House in 2024. The attorney general who filed a complaint against him? “Racist” and “corrupt”. The judge who presides over the proceedings? A thug”. No doubt, Donald Trump is once again at the heart of American legal news.
His civil trial for fraud opened this Monday, October 2 in Washington, where the former American president is on trial with two of his sons, Donald JR and Eric, for having overvalued their real estate assets by several billion dollars in the 2010s. . Through this maneuver, the objective was to then be able to obtain more favorable loans from banks and better insurance conditions.
The Trump camp obviously denies the facts, its lawyers evoking a “president (who) built one of the most successful real estate empires on the planet” and a client who did not commit any “fraud”, but who made “ real estate.” But magistrate Letitia James, who filed a complaint against him, insists: Trump would be the author of “repeated fraud”, and would have “cheated” for years. Kevin Wallace, one of the members of his team, reaffirmed that the fraud had already been legally established and that the people targeted by the civil complaint “had overvalued their assets between 812 million and 2.2 billion dollars per year” from 2014 to 2021. Including when Donald Trump was in the White House, between 2017 and 2021.
“Repeated frauds” established
If Donald Trump does not risk prison in this trial, he is still already playing big. Already, because it could cause him to lose control of many assets of his economic empire. The case already took on a considerable stake last week when Judge Arthur Engoron, who presided over the proceedings, ruled in an interim order that “repeated fraud” had been established.
The magistrate thus ordered the withdrawal of business licenses in the State of New York from Donald Trump and his sons, managers of the Trump Organization, as well as the confiscation of the companies targeted by the complaint, so that they are entrusted to liquidators . The Trump camp obviously appealed. But if the decision were implemented, he could, for example, lose control of Trump Tower in New York, the American tycoon’s historic building. To this must also be added financial penalties of up to $250 million.
Trump with a closed face
If Donald Trump lost his temper in front of the cameras upon his arrival at the Supreme Court of the State of New York, once in the courtroom, the former president spent his first day sitting, his face closed, not speaking only to his lawyers. One of his two sons targeted by the complaint, Eric Trump, sat behind him, on the first day of a trial which promises to be long and technical.
Above all, it offers a foretaste of the legal deadlines likely to disrupt Donald Trump’s campaign for the Republican nomination, and even for the 2024 presidential election. Criminally charged in four cases, he must appear in particular from March 4 before a federal court in Washington, where he is accused of trying to reverse the result of the November 2020 presidential election. A first conviction would then launch his campaign very painfully. Even if, as with each of his indictments, Donald Trump’s supporters received a new call yesterday afternoon to finance his campaign. As a symbol that nothing seems to be able to shake the support of some Americans for their former President.