And four. Former US President Donald Trump was charged for the fourth time on Monday, August 14, by a Georgia state court. This affair once again shakes up the candidate for the Republican nomination in 2024, who does not hesitate to denounce a “witch hunt”. A look back at the many disputes between the former president of the United States and the courts.
The series begins Thursday, March 30, 2023. This is the first time in US history that a former president has faced criminal charges. And this is a rather embarrassing first case. That day, Donald Trump was in fact charged by the New York justice system for accounting falsifications aimed at buying the silence of a pornographic actress during his 2016 campaign.
The 44-year-old actress, who claims to have had a relationship with Donald Trump in 2006 and 2007, received $130,000 just before the presidential campaign to keep the information secret. The transaction is not in itself illegal, but Michael Cohen, the lawyer and man of confidence of Trump revealed in 2018 that the accounts of the company Trump Organization had been falsified. The amount paid had been presented as “legal fees”. The accused denounces a political machination.
The New York district attorney is currently looking for an indictment for “falsifying business records in the commission of another crime, possibly a campaign finance violation,” reports the Washington Post. Under US law, the maximum penalty for this offense is four years in prison.
Almost two months later, the situation is getting worse for anyone who wants to run for president in 2024. On June 8, Donald Trump must this time face a federal indictment. The former President of the United States is charged with unlawfully possessing confidential documents at his private residence in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, after he left the White House in 2021.
In this case, he is the subject of 37 charges, including “withholding information relating to national security” and “obstructing justice”. Part of the illegally detained documents contained US nuclear secrets. The accused, once again, denies and denounces a politicization of justice. “I am innocent, I have done nothing wrong and I will fight,” he even declared in a video on Twitter. It is currently difficult to know what could lead to such a case because there is no precedent.
A call to sedition. This is what Donald Trump is accused of on August 1. This third indictment is the most politically perilous. Pinned by a federal grand jury, the former president is accused of trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election, culminating in the Capitol Riot on January 6, 2021.
The indictment suspects him of having “created an atmosphere of suspicion and anger and undermined public confidence in the conduct of the election”. If the former president had the right to challenge the result of the election or to make accusations, even false, he is accused of having undermined the Constitution by having incited sedition. For this, he will have to answer four specific counts: conspiracy against the United States “ by fraud, dishonesty and deception ” ; conspiracy to obstruct an official process, in this case “ the counting and certification of the election by Congress on January 6, 2021 ”; obstruction of due process; and conspiracy to undermine the right of voters to have their votes counted.
“The attack on our nation’s Capitol on January 6, 2021 was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy,” Special Prosecutor Jack Smith said gravely. Again, Donald Trump denied the whole affair. “This indictment is nothing but the latest installment in the pathetic efforts of the Biden crime family and its armed arm, the Department of Justice, to interfere in the 2024 presidential election.”
The situation, again unprecedented, does not make it possible to predict the risks incurred by Donald Trump.
Today, it is the justice of the State of Georgia which accuses Donald Trump. The latter would have tried to manipulate the elections in this key state, during the presidential election in 2020. The investigation by Fani Willis, the Fulton County prosecutor, also involves eighteen advisers and members of the entourage of the former president.
Donald Trump is the subject of thirteen counts, including attempted electoral fraud and the exertion of pressure on employees. According to the investigation, Trump and the other defendants have indeed increased the pressure on local elected officials to find irregularities or have spread lies and rumors about possible fraud. They “refused to accept that he lost and knowingly and willfully participated in a conspiracy to illegally change the election results in favor of Trump,” prosecutors said in the preamble to the indictment. The former president now has until August 25 to appear in court in Atlanta.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said she wants a trial “within six months” and pointed to a Georgia gang law twenty years in prison.