The ex-president is due to be tried in six cases by the end of the year. Enough to parasitize the primaries of the Republican Party, of which he is the big favorite.
Campaigning for the presidential election from the benches of the courts is the unprecedented situation for which Donald Trump is preparing in 2024. According to the poll aggregator of the specialized site FiveThirtyEight, the billionaire is leading the voting intentions for the Republican Party primaries, which began Monday, January 15 with the Iowa caucuses. On Tuesday, the former American head of state was nevertheless summoned before a civil court in New York, where he appeared for defamation against an author who accused him of rape, E. Jean Carroll.
This is only the first of six trials awaiting Donald Trump in 2024. He must appear starting January 29 in another civil proceeding, in which the billionaire and his company are accused of having promoted a scam system, recalls The Hill. On March 4, the eve of “Super Tuesday”, when around fifteen states vote for the primaries, a historic trial begins before a federal court in Washington. Donald Trump, accused of “conspiracy against the American state”, is on trial there for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
This procedure, which is expected to last several weeks, risks coinciding with another, this time in civil proceedings. From March 25, Donald Trump is in fact on trial in New York for having falsified accounting documents after having bought the silence of Stormy Daniels, a former porn actress with whom he allegedly had an extramarital affair. He is then expected before a federal court in Miami, from May 20, in the case of the classified White House archives found in his private residence in Florida. This trial will take place in the home stretch of the Republican primaries. The party’s nominee is then scheduled to be announced at the national convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, July 15-18.
A final procedure should start during the summer in Georgia, a state where Donald Trump is also accused of having tried to interfere with the results of the 2020 presidential election. The prosecutor proposed the date of August 5 to begin the debates. The hearings could then continue until the end of 2024, well after the presidential election on November 5.
If some of these trials can still be postponed, the billionaire’s campaign nevertheless risks being disrupted by the time he will spend in the courts, and not on the ground. Enough to reverse his favorite status among the Republicans? Everything will depend on the outcome of these proceedings, says the New York Times. If the multiple indictments have strengthened Donald Trump’s popularity over the months, a conviction could cause him to lose the support of some of his voters.