Tuesday, April 4, was a very long day for the former American president Donald Trump, and one taut with suspense for American politics. At the end of it all, Donald Trump found out the charges the Manhattan’s district attorney’s office have brought against him. Basically, Trump is accused of having fraudulently falsified business records to conceal illegal expenses. Donald Trump entered a ‘not guilty’ plea on all 34 felony charges of falsifying business records. Trump was not detained, although Judge Juan Merchan has advised both the defense and the state against using any inflammatory rhetoric. Trump then flew to his home in Florida, onboard his private jet. What Americans can expect next is not just the trial, but also a heated election campaign, when the former president will try to secure a nomination on behalf of the Republican Party and then a new term at the White House. Trump therefore enters the presidential race as the first American president with a criminal record – a status not be envied. How much will this weigh in the balance of the election, whether we’re talking about caucuses, primaries or general elections? There are too many variables to factor in before giving an answer straight away, but a preliminary assessment should include the fact that yesterday’s trial in New York is simply the start of Donald Trump’s problems.
Trump’s indictment – a premiere for the history of American democracy
The indictment of former president Donald Trump is somewhat surprising for the tradition of American politics. As a rule, sitting or former presidents of the USA are spared the embarrassment of appearing in the dock, not necessarily out of any special respect for who they are, but out of reverence for the office they currently or previously held and to avoid damaging America’s image. Even when other presidents stepped out of line, the American justice system was reluctant to parade them through courts of law. For instance, in the Watergate scandal, Richard Nixon was provided with the alternative of stepping down before being sent to court. Bill Clinton too could have ended up in the defendant’s box, but American lawmakers decided the Senate hearing in the highly controversial impeachment trial involving Monica Lewinsky had been enough to keep the public’s thirst for scandal in check. At the opposite end are the French, who seemingly are never eager to let slide any opportunity at putting their former leaders in a disgraceful light. Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy was sentenced to prison, and so was the former Prime Minister François Fillon. President Jacques Chirac himself was handed a suspended prison sentence. In this respect, post-communist Romania fares somewhere in the middle, having a former Prime Minister, Adrian Năstase, who served time, as well as two former presidents, Ion Iliescu and Traian Băsescu, who were accused of several crimes and abuses committed either during or after their terms as president, but who were never formally charged in court.
Donald Trump’s indictment, on the other hand, is surprising for another reason. The case has been long pending at the Manhattan district attorney’s office, and many had stopped believing it would eventually get to court. The six-year-old case was examined by federal prosecutors, election supervisors and another Manhattan district attorney, before they all reached the conclusion the evidence was not strong enough to warrant a trial. So when the news that the former president would after all appear in court hit the media, it came as a shock not just to the Republicans backing Donald Trump, but also to his political opponents.
Trump gets indicted not for buying the silence of an adult-film actress, but for his improper use of election campaign funds
At first glance, Trump’s indictment is not overly complicated, despite being a criminal felony trial. At the end of the 2016 election campaign, when Trump became president, Stephanie Clifford (better known as Stormy Daniels in the adult industry) tried to sell the media a story where she claimed to have had intimate relations with Donald Trump in 2006. To talk her out of it, one of Trump’s lawyers, Michael Cohen, paid the actress $130,000 in ‘hush money’. Nothing illegal or seriously out of place so far, except that the said lawyer tried to redeem his expenses from the presidential candidate’s election campaign fund. Hence the source of Donald Trump’s current troubles with the New York attorney’s office – New York prosecutors suspect (and possibly have evidence) that the records of the campaign’s funds were falsified to conceal this payment. In other words, there is reasonable doubt that funds earmarked to an election campaign, which theoretically should be perfectly transparent in public records, were misused to solve one of Trump’s personal problems.
It’s also worth noting in this respect the specificity of the American legal system, where the prosecutor’s office is an extension of the government, not part of the magistracy, which regulates judges’ activity. That doesn’t mean American prosecutors are not politically motivated. We should recall, in this context, that the prosecutor indicting Trump right now had also caused a whole lot of trouble to his Democratic colleague, Erid Adams, the Mayor of New York City.
Trump gets support even from his rivals and critics from the Republican Party
It is highly unlikely Donald Trump will get a prison sentence, legal experts have noted. Probably, the defendant will be handed a fine. But the possible leniency of the sentence is overshadowed by the exceptional political significance of this case, which kept the public tense even before district attorney Alvin Bragg brought the case to the jury, and the jury deemed it “actionable”. In the days prior to the Manhattan office reaching a decision, Donald Trump was making waves on Truth Social, a social network he funded, urging people to rebel, just like he did with the Capitol assault of January 2021: “Protest, take our nation back!” or “They are killing our nation as we sit back & watch” are just two such examples. Knowing the consequences such incitements can produce, and in the wake of several bomb threats, the police erected barricades outside the Manhattan Criminal Court.
Once the news of the indictment hit the media, the air became thick with suspense, because Donald Trump is not just an ex-president, he is also the most suitable Republican candidate to run in next year’s presidential election. Most Republicans have immediately reacted, claiming the indictment was a political witch hunt, an attempt to sideline Donald Trump from the presidential race. “It is an embarrassment that in this country, things have gotten to the point where an extreme stretch in interpretation of the law could be used in an attempt to take out a political opponent”, a Republican activist from Arizona claims. Overall, Trump’s popularity with the Republican voters is not questioned by the party, which makes even Trump’s potential adversaries within the party stick to this interpretation. The former US vice-president in the Trump administration, Mike Pence, whom Trump’s virulent supporters wanted to lynch in January 2021, has called Bragg’s case brought against Trump a “politically motivated trial”. A former member of Trump’s Cabinet, Nikki Haley, who has submitted her candidacy for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, said that Trump’s indictment is more about “revenge than justice”. Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, whom many see as Trump’s frontrunner opponent in the GOP nomination, has somehow distanced himself from Trump’s run-ins with the law, arguing he cannot comment on a situation he’s never experienced. The statement was perceived as irony and sparked some discontent within the Republican ranks. It did affect however the overarching reaction of the bulk of Republican voters, which is one of sympathy for the “injustice” facing the former president.
Will Trump’s indictment encourage prosecutors to launch similar actions against him, or will it help boost his approval rating?
On the other side of the debate, many fear the indictment plays into the well-known conspiracy theories promoted by Trump regarding the American administration and justice system. Just when the American media had barely started recovering after Trump’s repeated attacks, the anti-establishment rhetoric is now refreshed. The future would-be candidate might once again build his election campaign around ridding the USA of the “deep state”. In this regard, Trump’s indictment is a mistake, The Economist wrote shortly after news of Trump’s indictment broke out.
However, the former US president has another three investigations targeting him, each launched at the end of his turbulent term in office. As regards Trump’s public statements over voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election which preceded the assault on the Capitol building, the final act of the court case entailed Mike Pence’s deposition before the Grand Jury in February this year. On March 17, a federal judge ruled one of Trump’s lawyers must take the stand in the case investigating classified documents found by the FBI in Trump’s private residence in Mar-a-Lago, Florida at the end of his mandate. The American media wrote that the hearing was deemed necessary in light of suspicion Trump misled his own lawyers with respect to these documents. Another Grand Jury is investigating election interference allegations made by former president Trump, who claimed “11,780 were missing” in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Of all the four investigations, the Manhattan district attorney’s case is seen as potentially the least damaging to the former president.
The first question we should ask after this indictment is tied to the fate of Donald Trump’s candidacy for a new term at the White House. Political pundits say it is a matter of timing. If the outcome of the trial favors Trump, it will very likely act as a springboard for getting Trump nominated as the Republican candidate. However, given the other pending court cases, they may very likely negatively impact the American conservatives’ decision to nominate Trump.
What is certain, is that Donald Trump holds good chances of becoming not just the only American president targeted by two impeachment attempts (December 2019 and January 2021), but also the only American president who gets indicted in several investigations. It is a non-partisan political feat, to use a frequently used term in White House lingo, which truly casts a shadow over American democracy.
