The 12 jurors who have in their hands the legal fate of Donald Trump continue Thursday in Manhattan court their quest for a verdict in the first criminal trial of a former president of the United States, who aspires to become one again.
Arriving at the Manhattan criminal court, which he is prohibited from leaving during all deliberations, the Republican candidate once again denounced a “junk court” and a trial orchestrated according to him by his opponent, Democratic President Joe Biden .
“I just want to say that this is a very sad day for America […] Everything is rigged,” he added, while he will be judged by citizens of New York drawn at random and selected by the defense and the prosecution.
After six weeks of trial where it was a question of sex, money, and the conquest of power, these seven men and five women must now answer a single question, and unanimously: did Donald Trump guilty of 34 falsifications of accounting documents to conceal a payment of $130,000 to porn actress Stormy Daniels, intended to spare her from a sex scandal at the very end of her 2016 presidential campaign?
A positive response would tip the 2024 US presidential campaign into an unknown scenario.
Chaos
The former President of the United States, who escaped two impeachment proceedings during his mandate (2017-2021) and left the White House in chaos on January 20, 2021, without recognizing his defeat against Joe Biden, could appeal and always run against your Democratic rival.
But he would have a heavy hat to wear, that of a candidate condemned by the courts.
The trial in New York is all the more important because it will probably be the only one to take place before the presidential election, among the four cases in which Donald Trump is charged, including that before federal justice in Washington for his alleged illegal attempts to overturn the results of the election he lost in November 2020.
The jurors retired to deliberate Wednesday, behind closed doors in a court room, with their notes and a computer containing the evidence in the case.
After a few hours of work, they asked to listen again to extracts from the testimonies of two key players in the case, the former boss of a tabloid newspaper close to Donald Trump, David Pecker, and the former personal lawyer and trusted man of Donald Trump, who is now the number one accuser in the case, Michael Cohen.
Their testimonies include a meeting they had with Donald Trump in August 2015 at Trump Tower in New York, where they hatched a plan to chase away any potential scandal targeting the future candidate for the White House, even if it meant going out. the checkbook to silence embarrassing witnesses.
Complex affair
A sign that the case is complex, Judge Juan Merchan also reread on Thursday, at the request of the jurors, the legal instructions he had given them the day before, before they left to deliberate.
Donald Trump is being prosecuted for having concealed in the accounts of his group of companies, the Trump Organization, the reimbursement in 2017 of 130,000 dollars to Michael Cohen, who had himself paid the money to the actress Stormy Daniels, to the very end of the 2016 presidential campaign.
The porn actress was paid to keep quiet about a sexual relationship she claims to have had with the real estate mogul in 2006, when he was already married to his wife Melania.
For the defense, the prosecution does not stand because Donald Trump, who became “leader of the free world”, had other things to do than examine the paperwork justifying reimbursements to his lawyer.
For the prosecution, these false accounting documents on the contrary made it possible to hide electoral fraud, the payment to Stormy Daniels being considered an illegal campaign expense.
If Donald Trump were found guilty, the judge would pronounce the sentence in several weeks, but probably before November 5. The sentence can go, in theory and at most, up to four years in prison, but the magistrate can also decide on a lighter sanction, such as a prison sentence with suspended probation, or even simple community service.