The exact moment for the indictment and arrest of former US President Donald Trump, if he arrives – he dared it to be Tuesday and the media is defoliating the daisy: this Wednesday? Next week? – is not the only doubt hanging over his alleged guilt in a case of paying $130,000 (about 120,000 euros at current exchange rates) to buy the silence of porn actress Stormy Daniels. All that is clear is that the events just before the 2016 election, in which he defeated Hillary Clinton, had the opposite effect. If he intended to bury the relationship between the two, which he denies, he hasn’t succeeded: Seven years later, they’re still talking about it.
Will we see him handcuffed? What are the chances of him ending up behind bars? Will he resist the process? How will all of this affect his chances of returning to the White House in 2024? This is a look back at the questions and answers raised by news that, while only a possibility, caused a veritable political earthquake in the United States this week. And for this time, journalism as a history synopsis is not a cliché: if impeached, it will be the first time a former president has gone through that process.
What exactly is he accused of? According to Daniels, the two had sex at a Lake Tahoe hotel in 2006, culminating in a day at a celebrity golf tournament. Trump was then a real estate mogul and an acclaimed television personality. Daniels says he suggested helping her with her career in the medium. A decade later, Michael Cohen, then a Trump attorney, paid the interpreter $130,000 to shut up just weeks before the 2016 election. That was proven in a 2018 trial that found Cohen guilty and sentenced him to three years in prison. Cohen claims his client, already a White House tenant, reimbursed him for that amount. He also denies this extreme. In the United States, it is not illegal to buy someone’s silence, but it is done with money from an election campaign, in this case the one that brought Trump to the presidency. The key lies in the way this movement was reflected in the Trump Organization’s accounting. This document falsification in itself is considered a crime, which becomes a criminal offense if it is shown that the operation contributed to the commission of another crime. It’s not yet clear whether the Manhattan (New York) District Attorney will vote for Alvin Bragg, the former president’s last nemesis, but legal experts are talking about the options: federal or state campaign funding of crimes, or conspiracies to commit them influence or prevent an election.
Who decides on the suitability of your attribution? The members of the grand jury investigating the trial before which Bragg built his case. You must vote for at least 12 of Manhattan’s 23 citizens that make up her. On Monday, they heard testimony from a Trump ally, Robert J. Costello, Cohen’s former legal adviser, whose credibility he was trying to undermine. After testifying, Costello told reporters, “I told the grand jury that this guy [por Cohen] He wouldn’t tell you the truth even if you put a gun to his head.” The fact that the Manhattan District Attorney offered Trump to testify a few weeks ago says, if you’re following the city’s judicial process, for the imminent indictment.
Robert Costello left the Manhattan DA’s office Monday after testifying. Stephanie Keith (Bloomberg)
What happens if they accuse him? You have to appear in court. It may take several days from the time your attorneys receive the notification. An initial statement via video conference is also permitted. He is currently in Florida; After leaving the White House, he moved to the Mar-a-Lago mansion in Palm Beach, from where he is now mainly active in the social network he founded after being kicked out of Twitter in 2021. It’s called Truth Social and in it he posted an angry message in all caps on Saturday morning, in which he assumed he would be arrested on Tuesday due to “leaks”. People close to him have assured the New York Times that it is his intention to appear voluntarily. If he resists, there could be the unlikely event that he would have to issue an extradition order to Florida, which would have to be approved by Gov. Ron DeSantis, who appears to be Trump’s biggest challenger in the nomination race. Republicans for next year’s presidential election.
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And then? More unknowns. They’ll have to fingerprint you, take the inmates’ signature frontal and profile photos, and read you your rights (you’ll remember that part from the movies: “You have the right to remain silent…”). This trance will be private. You must then appear before the judge for the public reading of the charges and your plea of acquittal or guilt. He could do this in handcuffs (with his hands in front or behind his back), although this is not a sine qua non. All of this is accompanied by the spectacular invention of intelligence that accompanies him as a former president. At this point, as at so many others in this trial, Bragg walks a precarious balance between proving that no one, not even Trump, is above the law and leaving it in no doubt that we are not facing a political trial of any person who plans to run in the race for the White House and that if he gets to the end there is a high probability that he will end up facing President Joe Biden.
Could Trump end up in jail? It’s unlikely. Forging business documents is a criminal offense in New York State with penalties of up to four years. It’s not clear if the district attorney in charge, Democrat Bragg, will seek jail time for him. Even if you don’t, the judge could send you to jail if you’re found guilty.
Are protests to be expected? The news volcano, which erupted on Saturday morning, included an appeal for his supporters to protest the “taking back” of the “country.” Those words refreshed the echoes of the messages he had sent in the days leading up to the attack on the Capitol. New York and Washington on Tuesday tightened security at key points in both cities where more reporters than supporters were seen at the moment. The media reported last week that various federal and local authorities were holding meetings to prepare for the eventuality of an explosion of discontent among his supporters.
Is this your only pending case in the judiciary? No. Trump faces several investigations. On the one hand, his alleged involvement in the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The Department of Justice has opened “the largest investigation in the history of the United States” and is investigating the alleged attempts to prevent a peaceful transfer of power by the man who was defeated by Biden in the election but has since indulged in theories that have been consistently proven wrong in court that his election was stolen. It remains to be seen if they will blame him for the attack on the Capitol, as the House committee investigating him for a year and a half concluded: His nine members recommended him be tried for incitement to riot, conspiracy, false testimony and conspiracy to bring to justice for defrauding the United States and obstructing an official process of Congress, the vote confirming Biden’s victory. Related to this time between the election and Jan. 6 is another grand jury’s investigation, this time in Atlanta, into his alleged attempt to influence Republican officials to reverse the outcome of that state’s presidential election, which the candidate won close. He also has an open case about the hundreds of classified documents from his presidency that he took after leaving office that the FBI found during a search in Mar-a-Lago. In addition, there are pending civil lawsuits for their business in New York.
Donald Trump and Stormy Daniels. MANDEL NGAN ETHAN MUELLER (AFP)
And what are they saying in the Republican Party? Over the weekend, leading members of the Conservative Party spoke out to criticize the idea of an indictment. One of the first was House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who vowed to launch an investigation into Congress to see if the elections were being obstructed “with politically motivated processes.” This Tuesday, at an annual meeting of party lawmakers held in Orlando, Fla. to discuss the conservative agenda and monopolized by the news from Manhattan, McCarthy complained that “a district attorney is meddling in national politics.” For his part, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul tweeted: “Trump’s impeachment would amount to a disgusting abuse of power. [Bragg] He deserves to be incarcerated.” Although the most requested response was from DeSantis, who criticized that a prosecutor “ignores the crimes being committed in his jurisdiction” and prefers “to go back to a case from years ago and trying to pay an actress to use porn to further a political agenda.” Conservative newspaper The Wall Street Journal has opposed the idea of arresting the former president because it would plunge the country into “an eternal media circus.” “And he would do so at the risk of a single juror blocking a guilty verdict and confirming Trump’s claim that the trial is political. (…) An intelligent prosecutor should assess the potential harm to the… respect confidence in the rule of law by presenting an indictment that affects at least half of the country as politically related will pay attention. An indictment against a former president or current candidate for crimes must be brought with undeniable evidence.”
How will all of this affect Trump’s ambitions in 2024? It’s difficult to say. He could be heating up his base or convincing the moderates in his party, which he needs to win, that insisting on him as a candidate is not a good idea, considering he has lost three elections in a row (the general election in 2018 and 2022 and the 2020 presidential elections). For now, polls consistently confirm that he remains the politician with the greatest superiority over American conservatism. A few weeks ago, on the closing day of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Trump made it clear to reporters what he had no intention of doing: a criminal complaint would not prevent him from pursuing his party’s nomination. “I wouldn’t even consider leaving it for a second,” he added. “Probably something like that would get me votes.”
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