The trial of Donald Trump, which began Tuesday in New York with the reading of thirty counts of charges, will go quickly. And his likely outcome, a trial with the tycoon on the bench, could coincide with the Republican primary for the 2024 US presidential election. Though New York’s courts typically take an average year between the indictment and the trial, Trump’s is next The court date in Manhattan is December 4, and prosecutors have asked the judge to move the trial to January, a month before the Iowa caucuses officially start the presidential primary.
All of this will happen if the re-election candidate’s attorneys fail to quash what they say is a house of cards case: The Manhattan Attorney’s Office’s indictment, released on Tuesday, consists of 34 felonies of falsifying business records to conceal payments that cover up alleged extramarital affairs. But not only Trump’s representatives doubt the strength of the indictment. Some attorneys have also suggested that prosecutor Alvin Bragg could face difficulties in pursuing the case. It is the dissertation by New York University law professor Rebecca Roiphe. “There has been speculation that Trump’s illegal payments may have affected the outcome of the election, and this idea is based on controversial legal issues that can be difficult to prove,” says the expert, quoted by the New York Times. The case he is now charged with is not the only one facing the former president. Not even the most dangerous.
Alvin Bragg, the first African-American incumbent on the Manhattan Attorney’s Office, is wading in tricky legal waters with few precedents. For the defense, this unknown is the main advantage, along with the alleged weakness of the prosecution. The experts do not agree on the possible seriousness of the accusation: while some see shadowy areas, others celebrate his courage. The point is whether the New York law magnate’s transgression (falsifying accounting entries to hide bribes paid to porn actress Stormy Daniels, a former Playboy model and Trump Tower janitor) implied another crime, the Violating federal laws such as those governing campaign finance. Bragg has no state jurisdiction, and the jump between the two is an uncertain candy for some.
It should be remembered that the payments were made in the final stages of the 2016 campaign to prevent the then-Republican candidate’s alleged affairs with Daniels and ex-model Karen McDougal, as well as the purchase of the hush of a concierge in Trump Tower, the headquarters of the family business in Manhattan. The goal was to maintain his ambitions as President.
Major Crimes
All 34 charges against Trump are Class E crimes, the lowest category of crimes in New York. With a maximum sentence of four years in prison, Trump would theoretically face a total of 136 years in prison. Falsifying business records is generally considered a misdemeanor unless the fraud is used to commit a second offense – an alleged violation of campaign rules – in which case it would be a criminal offence. But was the hypothetical breach of election-funding rules consequence, mere coincidence, or intentional? That is, will the indictment be upheld or can it be blown away as Trump’s lawyers are suggesting?
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Experts Karen Friedman Agnifilo and Norman Eisen believe that “there is nothing new or weak in this case”. “The charges in books and records uncovered in the indictment documents against Mr. Trump are the prosecutor’s be-all and end-all,” they wrote in the New York Times this Wednesday. Filing false documentation to cover up campaign finance violations is common in New York, so the case against Trump has a good chance of succeeding. However, another columnist from the same newspaper believes that “despite all the hype and pelvis on Tuesday [Trump] You can still wriggle out of that bondage.”
Criticism of what they see as judicial ordeal is also growing among Republicans, while Democrats stand out. “The exaggeration of the prosecution [Bragg] it sets a dangerous precedent for criminalizing political opponents and damages public confidence in our justice system,” said Republican Sen. Mitt Romney, a well-known Trump critic. William Barr, who was Attorney General [jefe del Departamento de Justicia] of the Republican president, called the allegations of voter fraud an “utter lie” and the impeachment a “pathetically weak case”. For Andrew McCabe, whom Trump fired as deputy director of the FBI in the closing stages of his presidency, impeachment is a “fiasco.”
The majority of votes agree that the charges against the former president are both humiliating and serious, which does not exclude the risk of the trial. The jurisdiction of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office is New York with all its financial dimensions. That means he routinely investigates complex economic cases, like the international BNP-Paribas scandal of 2014, and others involving high-profile individuals, like the recent case against Allen Weisselberg, the former CFO of the Trump Organization, over a complicated Was charged with conspiracy and convicted of tax fraud.
But the prosecution’s next step, showing that the crimes Trump is charged with are even more serious, falls squarely into wire territory. The fact that the conspiracy orchestrated by Trump, with the help of attorney Michael Cohen and former editor of the tabloid National Enquirer, to bury any scandal that could ruin his political career proves the existence of a conspiracy, as the indictment shows, is no guarantee of success .
Trump, who pleaded not guilty to all charges on Tuesday, is the 30th accused of Bragg accounting fraud since taking office in January 2022 after winning the Democratic primary on a platform focused on bail reform and probation , a hot potato in New York. and no Trump in sight. Bragg, a 49-year-old Harlem resident, has so far filed 151 such charges. In fact, the Trump Organization’s conviction and Weisselberg’s guilty plea included crimes of accounting fraud. The magnate faces 11 charges for false invoices, 11 for false checks and stubs, and 12 for false entries in the ledgers. The Trump Organization accounted for the then-president’s reimbursement checks to Cohen as “legal fees,” which passed the money on to Stormy Daniels. In fact, there is a third derivative of the charge that Bragg himself and prosecutors have pointed out: the possibility that a crime was committed to hide money from the Treasury Department, given that Cohen received not only $130,000, the amount he Daniels had advanced, but up to 420,000 to replace what the Treasury appeared to want to take away.
In Bragg’s recitals, the false recordings “cover up attempts to violate state and federal election laws,” the prosecutor said Tuesday. It wouldn’t be the first time a New York prosecutor has won a case involving forging documents to cover up campaign finance violations. According to experts, there is precedent for state agencies to apply state law in cases involving federal candidates, as was the case with Trump. The $130,000 payment to Daniels exceeds federal campaign donation limits.
Trump on Tuesday became one of the estimated 31,000 people indicted for crimes each year in New York State’s grim courthouses on the 15th floor of 100 Center Street. Unlike the other inmates, it was a different experience for the tycoon, in the wings of a caravan of vehicles with tinted windows and a colossal display of secrets. Without handcuffs, without spending a minute in one of the cells where the inmates wait, it was a quick, almost painless process. The laws that New York applies to you are the same as they apply to the rest, although their interpretation may be new.
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