The date was eagerly awaited, a few months before the American presidential election. On March 25, Donald Trump will become the first former president of the United States to face a criminal trial over payments to silence an alleged relationship with a porn actress.
“We want delays,” said the Republican favorite for the November presidential election as he arrived at the Manhattan courthouse on Thursday, February 15. “How can you run for office when you’re on trial? “. “It's just a way to harm me in the election,” denounced the ex-president, who regularly accuses the judges of being under the thumb of the democratic camp.
Judge Juan Merchan of the New York court rejected Donald Trump's requests to dismiss the lawsuits, as the Republican tycoon wanted.
The former Republican president is embroiled in a scandal that he apparently tried to cover up before running for the White House in 2016: He is accused of accounting fraud after he made payments through the Trump Organization to the porn actress Stormy Daniels the sum of $130,000, so that she doesn't make her previous relationship public. The relationship dates back to 2006. At the time, Donald Trump was already married to Melania Trump, who had just given birth to her last son, Barron Trump.
Other ongoing legal cases
At the same time, a judge in Georgia on Thursday began hearing a motion from Donald Trump's lawyers seeking to dismiss election interference charges against the former president. The prosecutor investigating the case was accused of having a romantic relationship with a lawyer she had hired to work on the case.
The ex-president is actually being sued in federal courts and the state of Georgia for his allegedly unlawful attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election won by Joe Biden. The federal trial in Washington was scheduled to begin March 4 but was postponed while a decision was made about the former president's possible immunity from prosecution.
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For now, these and the many other cases against Donald Trump have done no damage to his credibility with the Republican activist base, and he handily won his party's first two presidential primaries in November in the states of Iowa and New Hampshire.
At 77, the Republican leader has even turned the courts into political forums. The Republican favorite used every appearance in the courtroom to portray himself, without evidence, as a victim of legal machinations orchestrated by prosecutors and judges on behalf of the Democratic camp. And his legal troubles allowed him to raise millions of dollars from activists.
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This new legal week for Donald Trump could continue on Friday when, as a source familiar with the case confirmed to Agence France-Presse, Judge Arthur Engoron delivers his verdict in a civil case in which the ex-president is accused of colossally inflating the sentence to have value of his real estate assets in the 2010s to tempt the banks.
Also read the decryption | Article reserved for our subscribers Donald Trump's legal fate rests in the hands of the Supreme Court, a key player in the presidential election
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