The criminal trial of Donald Trump opened this Monday, April 22 in New York. “A first for a former president”, underlines The New York Times. The current Republican candidate for the next presidential election is on trial for 34 falsifications of accounting documents from his business group, the Trump Organization. Falsifications in order to conceal the payment of $130,000 to former porn star Stormy Daniels in the home stretch of the 2016 presidential campaign. The money was used to buy the silence of the actress who claims having had a sexual relationship in 2006 with the Republican billionaire (which he denies), while he was already married to Melania Trump.
After a first week devoted to jury selection, the stage is set: 12 full jurors, seven men and five women, and six alternates are ready to judge Donald Trump in this case.
A “criminal conspiracy”
The trial therefore got to the heart of the matter on Monday. In presenting the charges to the jury, Manhattan prosecutors accused Donald Trump of having “orchestrated a criminal conspiracy” to distort the judgment of voters before the 2016 election and his narrow victory against Hillary Clinton, then of having “lied in accounting documents” to “conceal” this stratagem.
False, retorted the defense, who assured that Donald Trump was “totally innocent” and that the payments were not illegal. “Where is the crime in everything that has been described to you?”, swept Donald Trump’s lawyer, Todd Blanche, in response to the accusation. Calling the accounting documents at the heart of the case “pieces of paper, nothing else”. But the team of prosecutor Alvin Bragg intends to prove that these are, on the contrary, fraudulent maneuvers to hide information from voters a few days before the vote. “This is electoral fraud, pure and simple,” asserted one of the prosecutors, Matthew Colangelo, in front of the twelve jurors.
“Defendant Donald Trump orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election,” he explained. “Then he covered up this criminal plot and lied, again, again, and again, in his accounting documents in New York .”
Contempt of court
The debates have barely begun when the court examines, this Tuesday, April 23, the unbridled speech of Donald Trump on his Truth Social network and possible violations of the ban set by Judge Juan Merchan on attacking witnesses or jurors . From the first day of the trial, April 15, the prosecution had asked the judge to sanction Donald Trump with a fine of 3,000 dollars, in particular for virulent invectives against Stormy Daniels and his former lawyer Michael Cohen, who became his sworn enemy and a key witness for the prosecution.
“It’s a very, very, sad day for America,” said Donald Trump before entering the courtroom, denouncing as usual “a witch hunt” and a political operation carried out since the White House. On his Truth Social platform, the Republican billionaire once again fulminated during the night from Sunday to Monday against Juan Merchan, the judge who presides over the proceedings, whom he described as “corrupt”. “It’s a sham” trial, he also wrote in capital letters.
To avoid intimidation and pressure, the judge imposed anonymity on the jurors. It is also for this reason and in the face of Donald Trump’s sometimes violent rhetoric that he forbade him from attacking jurors, witnesses, court personnel and representatives of the public prosecutor’s office, with the exception of the magistrate himself and Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg. Donald Trump contests these bans, which he considers to be attacks on his freedom to campaign and describes as unfair because Michael Cohen does not hesitate to criticize him.
To punish possible contempt of court, the judge can order fines but also imprisonment not exceeding 30 days. On Tuesday, the debates should resume late morning in New York (at 3 p.m. GMT).