Trump faces a primary campaign peppered with court dates

Until the first Tuesday of November 2024, when he hopes to be re-elected president of the United States, Donald Trump has ahead of him a calendar with dates marked twice in red. On the one hand, those of the three civil and two criminal trials, which could be more if a new charge is confirmed in Washington for electoral interference in 2020 and 2021, including the assault on the Capitol, and a probable announcement of charges in Georgia, also for trying to reverse the electoral result. On the other, there are the main appointments of the primaries, in which according to the polls he has a wide advantage over his Republican rivals, exceeding 50% support in many of them.

Between one date and another, a disturbing zigzag draws the roadmap of the first accused president in US history, with derivatives and script twists typical of Hollywood. The latest came on Thursday, when Trump was indicted on three new charges in the Mar-a-Lago papers case, for attempting to destroy video surveillance footage of his mansion and for obstruction of justice. In addition to Trump and his assistant Walt Nauta, who had already pleaded not guilty, the case included a third defendant, Carlos de Oliveira, the manager of Mar-a-Lago, for allegedly executing the order to destroy the material. De Oliveira, who started working as a butler two decades ago and was promoted to manager in 2022, will appear this Monday in Florida for the reading of the charges. A fourth employee, to whom the manager would have entrusted the assignment, also appears in the new accusation.

If the start dates of the criminal trials are maintained ―March 25 for the stormy daniels case, paying black money to hushed up an extramarital affair, and on May 20, for the Mar-a-Lago papers, for withholding confidential information—Trump could clinch the GOP presidential nomination before voters know if has been convicted of any of the charges (37 in the first case and 40, after adding the last three, in the second). But his criminal ordeal may become more tangled if special counsel Jack Smith indicts him, at any time, for his 2020 election meddling, which led to the January 6, 2021 storming of the Capitol, and if the Fulton County district attorney , Fani Willis, announces on September 1, or perhaps before, charges against him for the alleged attempted pot hole in Georgia.

Pending the motions of Smith and Willis, Trump’s first criminal trial – for falsifying business records to conceal the payment of money to porn actress Stormy Daniels in exchange for her silence – is scheduled for March 25, 2024, less than three weeks after the super tuesdaywhen more than a dozen states will vote in the primaries.

In Florida, Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed by him and enjoys his sympathies – he made it explicit, sowing doubts about the process -, set the date for the start of the second criminal trial, for the Mar-a-Lago papers, by May 20, 2024, when most of the primaries will be over and the final stretch of the campaign will be faced.

Until election day 2024, Trump also faces three civil trials, the first of which is scheduled for October 2, for alleged civil fraud, a case being investigated by the New York Attorney General, Letitia James, and in the that the tycoon, the Trump Organization and his eldest sons are accused.

On January 15, 2024, the same day of the caucuses of Iowa ―the starting signal for the primaries―, Trump will be tried for defaming, again, the writer E. Jean Carroll, who has asked for greater compensation, of ten million dollars (just over nine million euros) , after being disqualified again by the tycoon on CNN one day after learning of his five million dollar sentence for sexually abusing her in the 1990s and for defaming her in 2019, when she was in the White House.

Two weeks later, on January 29, the Republican faces trial in a federal class action lawsuit that accuses him and his organization of promoting a Ponzi scheme, with get-rich-quick promises to lure clients while receiving “large secret payments.” ” of the companies he was promoting. His emporium, the Trump Organization, has already been sentenced to a million-dollar fine for tax fraud.

Defense delaying maneuvers

Trump’s defense, on which he has spent $43 million so far this year, maintains that he cannot have a trial – or trials – just before the election, and has opted for a delaying strategy. In it stormy daniels case, tried unsuccessfully to transfer the case from the state court that accused him to a federal court, which he considers more favorable to his interests, but a judge ruled on July 19 against the change of jurisdiction. In Florida, however, he was able to get Judge Cannon to delay the trial until the spring, since prosecutors wanted to start in December. In New York, he has sued Carroll for defamation, unsuccessfully, and tried to torpedo the investigation of prosecutor James, even resorting to a complaint against her. The procrastination strategy would serve no purpose other than to buy time for the presidency, giving him the opportunity to install like-minded Justice Department officials or even try to pardon himself if he is convicted in any of the cases. Neither the indictment itself nor a conviction would prevent Trump from running or winning the 2024 election.

Oblivious to discouragement, Trump continues to turn each judicial setback into a coup, cheered by his thunderous capital letters in the messages he publishes on Truth Social, which accuse the Joe Biden Administration of persecuting him for political reasons. But he also invectives at his Republican challengers in the party’s primary. In a massive event of the party, held on Friday in Des Moines (Iowa), the 12 opponents present, including the second in the race, Ron DeSantis, avoided criticizing him, a gesture that Trump did not reciprocate. Instead, he lashed out at them, especially the governor of Florida. “I wouldn’t risk it for that one,” the former president joked, citing polls suggesting he would easily defeat Joe Biden while DeSantis would lose to the Democrat. The format of the act, the so-called Lincoln Dinner, gave 10 minutes of speech to each applicant. It took two hours before Trump spoke, but in just three minutes he ripped DeSantis apart, calling him a “globalist of the establishment” and “DeSanctis”, short for the nickname DeSanctimonious (of sanctimoniousbeato or meapilas in English).

On Saturday, at a rally in Erie (Pennsylvania), one of the states that benefited him in 2016, he again criticized DeSantis (“he’s almost finished”) and mocked the “ridiculous charges” against him, warning that with they prosecutors “have opened Pandora’s box.” “The lunatic radical Democrats impeach me, accuse me, rig our elections (…). When we win the election, I will appoint a real special prosecutor to show the monumental corruption of the Biden crime family, ”he reiterated. The candidate threatened Republicans not to help him get revenge, calling them tame, and urged them to launch investigations against Democrats if they don’t want to risk losing their seats. The idea of ​​a impeachment against Biden has gained traction this past week among congressional Republicans.

The Republican has made his legal challenge a centerpiece of his campaign, a strategy that will likely intensify if he is elected as the Republican nominee in the primary. As he proved the imputation of him in April by the stormy daniels case, the criminal charges have been a boost to his fundraising. The campaign announced it had raised more than $4 million in the 24 hours after that allegation was made public, smashing its previous record, following the FBI search of the Mar-a-Lago club a year ago now. Doubts about Biden’s age (he is 80, Trump 77) and the existence of Democratic candidates like Robert Kennedy Jr., who is reducing support for the president, also play in his favor.

However, the seriousness of the Mar-a-Lago case marks a difference from the other causes of a political nature (electoral interference and assault on the Capitol and Georgia) because it involves possession of classified documents, a violation, among others, of the called Espionage Law. Prosecutors accuse the former president of attempting to “alter, destroy, mutilate, or conceal evidence” and inducing another person to do so in order to obstruct a federal investigation into his possession of classified documents. The third charge added Thursday was knowingly withholding national defense information related to plans for military activity in another country. It is an attack plan, presumably on Iran, that Trump showed in July 2021 to two guests at his Bedminster (New Jersey) golf resort. He repeated the joke ―there is an audio of the Republican joking about the content― with a member of his team; none of those people had authorization from the State Department to see it. The main charges carry a penalty of up to 20 years in prison.

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