The prosecutors trying to convict Donald Trump face a highly unusual deadline. Retaking the presidency would offer Trump his best escape from jeopardy: once back in the White House, he would be able to squelch or pause the four criminal cases lodged against him. Hence prosecutors’ urgency – and a public interest – in concluding those trials before November. Miss that opportunity and he may never be held accountable in a court of law for his alleged crimes.
The 91 felony charges against Trump are both serious and picaresque. The weightiest are related to his role in the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. His attempt to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election was the most shocking and serious assault on the constitution in decades, if not since the civil war; whether a jury would see Trump as guilty or innocent has obvious salience as voters prepare to decide whether to return him to the presidency. There are additional allegations about election interference in Georgia and the mishandling of state secrets. And (as if a Trump saga could not be without a splash of tabloid entertainment), there is also a plot involving a payment to a porn star.
Former President Donald Trump, centre, sits in the courtroom with his legal team in the New York Supreme Court.Credit: AP
The pending criminal cases come on top of heavy losses Trump has endured recently in adjudicated civil lawsuits. On February 16, a judge in New York fined Trump and his business $US355 million ($554 million) (plus $US99 million and rising in interest) for misrepresenting asset values to lenders, and barred him from serving as a corporate director in the state for three years. Add the $US88 million in damages awarded to E. Jean Carroll, a writer whom Trump sexually assaulted decades ago and then defamed, and he owes more than $US500 million. The judgments – which he will appeal against – could deplete his cash holdings and compel him to sell some of his assets.
Trump insists he has done nothing wrong in any of the cases discussed in this article, and has so far incorporated all of them deftly into his restoration narrative of victimhood and revenge-seeking. The fact that two of the criminal indictments were brought by district attorneys elected to their offices as Democrats has provided ballast for his claims that he is being targeted by political enemies. Still, he will frequently appear before judges as an accused felon over the remaining eight months of the campaign. Indeed, Americans are already growing accustomed to a split-screen of scowling courtroom appearances and Make America Great Again rallies that has no precedent in past presidential elections.
Yet, Democrats who wish to see him locked up by election day will be disappointed. It seems probable that at most one or two trials will conclude before voting starts, and even if the former president is convicted of one or more felonies, he is likely to avoid or at least delay a prison term until after the election is decided.
A trial in the January 6 case could take place in the US summer or early autumn, depending on how Trump’s appeals unfold. If it does go forward during the campaign, wall-to-wall news coverage will refresh memories of how Trump’s Big Lie and his attempt to stop Congress from certifying the vote led hundreds of his supporters to storm the Capitol. Five people died as a result of the attack and more than 150 police officers were injured.
Former president Donald Trump attends the Trump Organisation civil fraud trial in New York State Supreme Court.Credit: Getty
However, instead of a trial-of-the-century about an event of plain historical significance, the flimsiest of the four cases may go forward first. That trial is scheduled for March 25 in Manhattan.
Alvin Bragg, a Democrat who is the borough’s elected district attorney, brought an indictment that does not lack ambition. Trump stands accused of 34 felonies for falsifying business records to hide hush money paid to Stormy Daniels, a porn actress, before the 2016 election. Prosecutors allege that Trump ordered his lawyer, Michael Cohen, to buy Daniels’s silence for $US130,000. After he won the election he reimbursed Cohen and marked those payments as legal expenses.
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