“If you don’t fight like hell, you don’t have a country anymore,” said Donald Trump in a speech to his supporters on January 6, 2020. Shortly after, there was a major assault on the Capitol, the seat of the United States Congress in Washington. While his responsibility for these uprisings is still being scrutinized by special investigators and further investigations are underway against the former US president, Trump is now preparing for the next legal front.
Soon, he could become the first president to face possible prosecution. The reason: shortly before the 2016 presidential election, Trump made his lawyer Michael Cohen pay the equivalent of more than 120,000 euros to porn actress Stephanie Clifford. The sum was intended to serve as a bribe and prevent publicity about Trump’s alleged affair with the sex film director from negatively affecting the race for the top job.
The payment itself complies with the law, as confirmed to the AFP news agency by professor of law John Coffee, from Columbia University. But, according to the district attorney’s allegations, the last president had reimbursement of secret money declared as attorney fees through his Trump Organization. This constitutes a forgery of business documents. If Senior Prosecutor Alvin Bragg can convince the New York grand jury tasked with examining the facts that Trump was using the forgery to cover up influence on the election campaign, the crime could be classified as a serious crime — and Trump could be sentenced to up to four years in prison.
Faced with a possible indictment, Trump announced his arrest on his Truth Social platform on Saturday and addressed his supporters with protest slogans: “The leading Republican candidate and former President of the United States of America will be arrested next Tuesday. our nation back!”
Party supports Trump
An actual arrest on Tuesday is considered unlikely, but according to Politico, the indictment can already be expected this week. In light of the events of January 6, there were widespread concerns that Trump might accept or even call for violent protests again. According to former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Trump’s announcement “would spark unrest among his supporters”. Republican friends in Trump’s party, including Kevin McCarthy, Pelosi’s successor in the House of Representatives, tried to calm the situation and avoid protests. But the cause, which Trump has called “completely disproved fairy tales and witch hunts”, has drawn a raft of supporters for the 76-year-old.
In addition to McCarthy, who speaks of “political revenge” and announced an investigation into the matter by Congress, Mike Pence, a former Trump deputy, also believes that investigations by democratic prosecutor Bragg are politically motivated. “It creates a lot of sympathy for the former president,” says the relatively moderate Chris Sununu, who is being traded alongside Trump as a possible Republican presidential nominee. A potential trial against Trump is unlikely to start in more than a year and therefore could fall in the final phase of the presidential election campaign scheduled for fall 2024, legal experts told Portal.
uncertain outcome
An indictment alone would not stop Trump from running again. However, just as it is unclear whether the former president will be able to extract political capital from a possible criminal prosecution, the course and outcome of the same are also unpredictable. The case is new legal territory. “There are several possibilities,” former FBI agent and prosecutor David Shapiro told Portal. Trump could, for example, refer to the five-year statute of limitations. (jm/apa/Portal)