Trump’s trial in New York has significant consequences not only for the elections but also for the US legal system, writes ‘s US correspondent Iida Tikka.
Iida TikkaYhdysvaltain correspondent
NEW YORK. Originally in New York Donald Trump the trial against was supposed to be the most trivial of all the trials that will be held against Trump.
In the soon-to-end trial, Trump is accused of paying bribes to a porn star to Stormy Daniels to cover up a one-night stand from the media and falsified records on the subject while running for president in 2016. In fact, paying bribes is not a crime in the US, but falsifying records is. According to the prosecutor, Trump has illegally withheld information from voters on the eve of the election.
The case is quite complicated and, according to some legal scholars, delicate. Now it has become the most significant Trump trial of all, and that’s because of the timing.
The trial in New York is very likely the only trial against Trump that will have time to be concluded before the fall elections.
At the moment, the start of the other three trials is at least delayed. In them, the charges would be more serious than the accounting crime and the crimes would be more familiar to the public: Trump is accused in Georgia of attempting to overturn the 2020 election results, in Washington of obstructing the transfer of power, and in Florida of mishandling state secrets.
Voters form therefore, his opinion on Trump’s presidential eligibility is at least partly based on the trial in New York, so the verdict carries a lot of weight.
That will be decided by the 12 jurors who retire today, Wednesday, to consider charges. The decision must be unanimous. Otherwise, a so-called hung jury will arise, i.e. a situation where no agreement was reached.
In practice, the biggest impact on the election would be if Trump were found guilty. A significant number of Republicans and nearly half of independent voters have said in opinion polls that they would not vote for Trump if he were convicted of a crime.
This is most likely the case with one particularly important group of voters: the women of the suburbs have already turned against Trump in previous elections precisely because of this unpresidential behavior, and a criminal conviction for a sex scandal will hardly attract them back to Trump’s supporters.
But what would happenif Trump were found not guilty?
If this were to happen, it would hardly turn Biden’s supporters behind Trump. They know the most important trials are yet to come.
Still, innocence could have far-reaching consequences.
Throughout the trial, Trump has repeatedly claimed that it is a political chase. Among other things, Trump has claimed the judge as corrupt, the prosecutors as Biden’s henchmen, and the timing of the trial as tactical.
There is no basis for Trump’s claims, and there is a known explanation for the unfortunate timing of the trial. The charges have only been brought years after the crime, because the criminal investigation did not progress during Trump’s presidency when the attorney general blocked the investigation.
If he is found not guilty, Trump will get his hands on yet another weapon to undermine the people’s faith in the entire system. According to Trump’s logic, if he were to be found not guilty, it would appear that the entire prosecution was pointless and that the justice system was corrupt.
The logic is flawed: the legal system specifically works when the innocent are found innocent and the guilty are found guilty. Only in authoritarian countries is the outcome of major trials decided when charges are brought.
But the more Trump tells his voters that America is already living in such a reality, the less they trust the justice system.
Trump’s trial was discussed in April on Uutispodcast.